Safe sanitation: Findings from the impact evaluation baseline survey in Thiruvarur, Tamil Nadu, India ; Financial Inclusion Improves Sanitation and Health - FINISH Project

FINISH - Financial Inclusion Improves Sanitation and Health - is a joint undertaking of a wide range of actors that came together to address the challenges of micro finance, insurance and sanitation and health. The overall goal of the project itself is to built 1 million safe toilets (possibly sanitation systems), financed through microfinance loans

Safe sanitation: Findings from the impact evaluation baseline survey in Orissa, India. Financial Inclusion improves sanitation and health - FINSIH Project

FINISH - Financial Inclusion Improves Sanitation and Health - is a joint undertaking of a wide range of actors that came together to address the challenges of micro finance, insurance and sanitation and health. The overall goal of the project itself is to built 1 million safe toilets (possibly sanitation systems), financed through microfinance loans

Sanitation and Child Health in India

This study contributes to the understanding of key drivers of stunted growth, a factor widely recognized as major impediment to human capital development. Specifically, it examines the effects of sanitation coverage and usage on child height for age in a semi-urban setting in Northern India. The study uses instrumental variables to control for endogeneity of sanitation usage coverage. The study finds that sanitation coverage plays a significant and positive role in height growth during the first years of life

No toilet, no bride: the unlikely link between private toilets and marriage market outcomes in India

In the latest post of our SDGs series (with Africa at LSE and the IGC), Britta Augsburg and Paul Rodríguez Lesmes examine the sanitation crisis in India, with a study on the determinants of toilet acquisition. Toilets represent an unlikely status symbol for households, and new findings suggest that households may see toilets acquisition as a means of improving the marriage prospects of their sons

Measuring the impact of microfinance on poor rural women in Mongolia: A randomised field experiment on group-lending versus individual lending ; baseline report

This report provides an in-depth description of the first wave of household data collected for a randomised field experiment to measure the impact of microcredit on poverty reduction among poor rural women in Mongolia. The experiment consists of two 'treatments': a group lending product with group responsibility (so-called 'joint liability') and an individual loan product. In a previous report (Attanasio et al, 2008) we detailed the background information to the project, the partner institutions involved, the randomisation methodology, loan products, and outcome variables of interest. In this report, we analyse the data collected from the first wave (the baseline). We provide descriptive statistics relating to our sample along a wide range of dimensions such as education choices, assets, savings, debt, income, enterprises, consumption and transfers. The analysis of this population is of interest in its own right and gives a first snapshot of the target population which is not available from existing data sources. We show formal comparisons of these characteristics between treatment and control groups, an important test of how well the randomisation actually worked, and thus a crucial pre-requisite against which the program will be evaluated in around a year's time

Group lending or individual lending? Evidence from a randomised field experiment in Mongolia

Although microfinance institutions across the world are moving from group lending towards individual lending, this strategic shift is not substantiated by sufficient empirical evidence on the impact of both types of lending on borrowers. We present such evidence from a randomised field experiment in rural Mongolia. We find a positive impact of access to group loans on food consumption and entrepreneurship. Among households that were offered group loans the likelihood of owning an enterprise increases by 10 per cent more than in control villages. Enterprise profits increase over time as well, particularly for the less-educated. For individual lending on the other hand, we detect no significant increase in consumption or enterprise ownership. These results are in line with theories that stress the disciplining effect of group lending: joint liability may deter borrowers from using loans for non-investment purposes. Our results on informal transfers are consistent with this hypothesis. Borrowers in group-lending villages are less likely to make informal transfers to families and friends while borrowers in individual-lending villages are more likely to do so. We find no significant difference in repayment rates between the two lending programmes, neither of which entailed weekly repayment meetings.Microcredit; group lending; poverty; access to finance; randomised field experiment

Microfinance in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A randomised field experiment on the impact of extending microfinance to marginal clients

This report provides a description of the first wave of household data collected for a randomised field experiment in Bosnia. The study intends to measure the impact of microcredit on poverty reduction among Bosnian households and the development of small enterprises that may otherwise not have access to finance

Experimental evidence from a mobile phone-based campaign in India

We investigate how religion concordance influences the effectiveness of preventive health campaigns. Conducted during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in two major Indian cities marked by Hindu–Muslim tensions, we randomly assigned a representative sample of slum residents to receive either a physician-delivered information campaign promoting health-related preventive practices, or uninformative control messages on their mobile phones. Messages, introduced by a local citizen (the sender), were cross-randomized to start with a greeting signaling either a Hindu or a Muslim identity, manipulating religion concordance between sender and receiver. We found that doctor messages increased compliance with recommended practices and beliefs in their efficacy. Our findings suggest that the campaign’s impact is primarily driven by shared religion between sender and receiver, leading to increased message engagement and compliance with recommended practices. Additionally, we observe that religion concordance helps protect against misinformation.publishersversionpublishe

Countering misinformation with targeted messages: Experimental evidence using mobile phones

Widespread misconceptions can be critical, especially in times of crisis. Through a field experiment, we study how to address such wrong or inaccurate beliefs using messages delivered to individual citizens using mobile phones. We focus on misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic in a hard-to-reach population – India’s slum residents. We randomly allocate participants to receive voice and video messages introduced by a local citizen, the messenger, and in which medical practitioners debunk misconceptions. To understand the role of targeting, we randomly vary the signaled religious identity of the messenger into either Muslim or Hindu, guaranteeing exogenous variation in religion concordance between messenger and recipient. Doctor messages are effective at increasing knowledge of, and compliance with, COVID-19 policy guidelines. Changes in misconceptions are observed only when there is religion concordance and mainly for religious-salient misconceptions. Correcting misconceptions with information requires targeting messages to specific populations and tailoring them to individual characteristics. (JEL D04, D80, D83, I10, I15, Z12

Can Micro-Credit Support Public Health Subsidy Programs?

The low take-up of cost-effective and highly subsidised preventive health technologies in low-income countries remains a puzzle. One under-studied reason is that the design of subsidy schemes is such that households remain financially constrained. In this paper we analyse whether, and how, micro-finance supports a large public health subsidy program in the developing world - the Swachh Bharat Mission - in achieving its aim of increasing uptake of individual household latrines. Exploiting a cluster randomised controlled experiment of a sanitation micro-finance program that coincided with the launch of the SBM program, and unique survey data matched to administrative data, we find that the complementarity runs on two levels: First, micro-credit allows households officially ineligible for the subsidy to invest in sanitation by alleviating credit constraints. Second, micro-credit also helps subsidy eligible households to overcome short-term liquidity constraints induced by the remuneration-post-verification subsidy design to invest in sanitation. Subsidy eligible households living in areas experiencing large delays in subsidy disbursement, or high toilet costs, are more likely to take a sanitation loan, but less likely to use the loan to construct a toilet