An Evaluation of the Indian Child Nutrition and Development Program

The Indian Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) aims to improve the physical and psychological well-being of children younger than five. However, previous evaluations find that ICDS fails to significantly impact child stunting and that program placement is faulty. My results contradict the lack of a significant treatment effect, but are consistent with problematic program placement. Previous analyses of ICDS used probit to study placement, but the distribution of state-wise ICDS coverage is negatively skewed violating the normality assumption of probit. To address this, I use beta regression to study placement and compare results with probit analysis. In addition, using Propensity Score Matching (PSM) I find evidence of a significant, positive average and quantile treatment effects on stunting. Data are from the most recent Indian Family and Health Survey (NFHS-3).Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Socioeconomic Distance as a Determinant of Female Autonomy and Child Welfare

We quantify the impact of network-based learning and influence on measures of female power and child nutrition in rural India. Empowering women to have greater say in child rearing may generate greater and more lasting benefits to children than nutrition supplementation. While researchers have used proxy reports or correlates like caste to trace networks, we map networks by surveying friends of respondents. We use participation in a women's education program to identify increases in female power, as well as stronger and more diverse networks. We study the ways in which networks affect individuals, namely learning and influence. Finally, we characterize the benefits of using survey data rather than proxies to identify networks. Our results linking networks to child nutrition should also inform child health policy.Consumer/Household Economics, Food Security and Poverty,

Determinants of Nutritional Outcomes of Children in India: A Quantile Regression Approach

In this paper, we use quantile regressions on data from the 2005-06 wave of the Indian National Family Health Survey to study the determinants of child body-mass-index, height-for-age, and hemoglobin at different points of the conditional distribution. Our results show that only considering the conditional mean of the entire distribution can yield misleading results. In light of compelling evidence on sex-selective abortion and infanticide, we use a Heckman correction for our quantile regression to control for the “underreporting” of female births documented by Rose (1999). We find that household maternal health and education have larger effects at the lower end of the distribution than on the upper end, for all three child nutritional indicators. Results show that iron supplements are less effective at increasing hemoglobin levels in the worst-off children. We argue that policy interventions must account for socioeconomic diversity or have little hope of meeting their target.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, International Development,

Empowering Women through Education and Influence: An Evaluation of the Indian Mahila Samakhya Program

This paper shows that participation in a community-level female empowerment program in India significantly increases participants' physical mobility, political participation, and access to employment. The program provides support groups, literacy camps, adult education classes, and vocational training. We use truncation-corrected matching and instrumental variables on primary data to disentangle the program's mechanisms, separately considering its effect on women who work, and those who do not work but whose reservation wage is increased by participation. We also find significant spillover effects on non-participants relative to women in untreated districts.women's empowerment, community-level interventions, impact evaluation, India

Three essays on investments in child welfare in India

In this dissertation, I evaluate two approaches that have the potential to improve child welfare, which persists at high levels in the developing world. In the first essay, I evaluate whether the Indian government's child nutrition intervention, the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) is able to reduce long-term malnutrition in children as measured by stunting. The ICDS provides supplements, peri-natal services, and daycare to targeted villages, and is one of many such programs in the developing world . Previous evaluations of ICDS have not adequately controlled for its targeted nature, introducing downward bias in their estimates, nor have such evaluations in India or elsewhere looked at the program's distributional effects. Controlling for targeting and using new data, I find significant treatment effects particularly for the most malnourished children. Unlike previous studies, I control for non-normality of ICDS coverage; however, like previous work, I find problems with the targeting of the program: while ICDS targets poor areas, it fails to target those with low average education or with unbalanced sex ratios. In the second essay, I examine the impact of an Indian women's empowerment program, Mahila Samakhya on empowerment outcomes. The program aims to empower women through education and by organizing them into support groups. First, I use primary data on 487 women in the state of Uttarakhand to match non-participants with untreated women and establish that the program is not targeted at any particular part of the population. Then, matching women over districts with and without the program, I show that program participants are more likely to (1) work, (2) attend village council meetings, (3) have identification cards to a government employment scheme that give them access to outside employment, and (3) leave the house without permission. My results thus establish that the Mahila Samakhya significantly improves gender empowerment. This study is only the second evaluation of the Mahila Samakhya program and the first to evaluate whether it improves female empowerment. This study is also the first to explore the how employment and social norm might differ in their impact on female empowerment. In the third essay, I quantify the impact of peer network-based learning and influence on female empowerment and child food intake using primary data on networks in Uttarakhand. I use participation in the Mahila Samakhya program to identify increases in the empowerment of the participant herself and her social network. Using a conceptual framework that combines the Nash bargaining framework, the demographic diffusion literature, and identity economics, I characterize three ways in which networks function: social learning, social influence, and identity utility. I then use 3SLS on network-weighted instruments to estimate the relative sizes of these mechanisms on empowerment and child food intake. Results show that female empowerment is significantly affected by social influence and identity through participation, while child food intake benefits most from learning

Beyond Average Treatment Effects: Distribution of Child Nutrition Outcomes and Program Placement in India's ICDS

Summary The Indian Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) aims to improve child nutrition by providing nutritional supplements and pre- and post-natal services to targeted villages. However, previous evaluations find that ICDS fails to reduce malnutrition, and program placement does not uniformly target vulnerable areas. I use new data to reevaluate ICDS on several dimensions; in contrast to previous studies, I find significant treatment effects particularly for the most malnourished children. However, results suggest targeting does not work uniformly well: ICDS effectively targets poor areas, but fails to target areas with low levels of average education or those with unbalanced sex ratios.child nutrition treatment effects targeting distributional effects Asia India

An Evaluation of the Indian Child Nutrition and Development Program

The Indian Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) aims to improve the physical and psychological well-being of children younger than five. However, previous evaluations find that ICDS fails to significantly impact child stunting and that program placement is faulty. My results contradict the lack of a significant treatment effect, but are consistent with problematic program placement. Previous analyses of ICDS used probit to study placement, but the distribution of state-wise ICDS coverage is negatively skewed violating the normality assumption of probit. To address this, I use beta regression to study placement and compare results with probit analysis. In addition, using Propensity Score Matching (PSM) I find evidence of a significant, positive average and quantile treatment effects on stunting. Data are from the most recent Indian Family and Health Survey (NFHS-3)

Does Involvement of Local NGOs Enhance Public Service Delivery? Cautionary Evidence from a Malaria-Prevention Evaluation in India

Using data from an experimental supportive intervention to India's malaria control program, this paper studies the impact of leveraging local non-state capacity to promote mosquito net usage and recommended fever care-seeking patterns. The supportive activities were conducted simultaneously by three nongovernmental organizations in two endemic districts in the state of Orissa. The study finds that program impact varied significantly by location. Examining three potential sources of this variation (differential population characteristics, differential health worker characteristics, and differential implementer characteristics), the analysis provides evidence that both population and nongovernmental organization characteristics significantly affected the success of the program. The paper discusses these findings as they relate to the external validity of development policy evaluations and, specifically, for the ability of the health system to benefit from limited non-state capacity in under-resourced areas