Cash Transfers for Child Health Initiative

This initiative is made possible with the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. CaTCH has provided research funding to J-PAL affiliates and invited researchers to conduct randomised evaluations and scoping studies on promising cash transfer and incentives programs in collaboration with several state governments in India. 

Over the last several decades, government agencies in India at both the national and state level have introduced a number of cash transfer programs that aim to improve educational, maternal and child health, girl child or other social welfare outcomes. However, there is limited credible evidence on the impact of these programs on outcomes, as very few of these programs have been rigorously evaluated, and none through a randomized evaluation. The current push towards cash transfer programs in India provides an opportunity for researchers to rigorously study these programs and understand their impacts. CaTCH aims to catalyse this research that studies the impact of various cash transfer mechanisms that aim to improve child health. These transfers generally fall into three groups:

• Unconditional Cash Transfers (UCT)
• Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT)
• Pay for Performance (P4P)

While cash serves as the primary means of transfer, CaTCH also looks at cash alternatives such as in-kind transfers and vouchers.

Child health indicators of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Infant mortality rates
• Nutrition outcomes
• Immunization completion rates
• Anemia prevalence
• Diarrhea incidence
• Health service usage

The initiative has completed comprehensive reviews of existing evidence on cash transfer programs, globally and in India, and on pay-for-performance incentives in low- and middle-income countries. Using these reviews, J-PAL affiliates and invited researchers may identify key research gaps and potential government partners for collaboration to fund promising evaluations of government funded and implemented cash transfer and pay-for-performance programs. We expect that evidence generated by the initiative will help governments across India scale-up evidence-based approaches to improve child health and enhance the delivery of existing programs.