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The authors examine how a government-run cash transfer program targeted to poor mothers in rural Ecuador influenced the health and development of their children. This program is of particular interest because, unlike other transfer programs that have been implemented recently in Latin America, receipt of the cash transfers was not conditioned on specific parental actions, such as taking children to health clinics or sending them to school. This feature of the program makes it possible to assess whether conditionality is necessary for programs to have beneficial effects on children. The authors use random assignment at the parish level to identify the program's effects. They find that the cash transfer program had positive effects on the physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development of children, and the treatment effects were substantially larger for the poorer children than for less poor children. Among the poorest children in the sample, those whose mothers were eligible for transfers had outcomes that were on average more than 20 percent of a standard deviation higher than those for comparable children in the control group. Treatment effects are somewhat larger for girls and for children with more highly-educated mothers. The authors examine three mechanisms-better nutrition, greater use of health care, and better parenting-through which the transfers might influence child development. The program appeared to improve children's nutrition and increased the chance they were treated for helminth infections. But children in the treatment group were not more likely to visit health clinics for growth monitoring, and the mental health and parenting of their mothers did not improve.

Child development --- Clinics --- Families --- Health care --- Health Monitoring and Evaluation --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Mental --- Mental health --- Mortality --- Nutrition --- Nutritional status --- Parenting

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The 1997 Indonesian financial crisis resulted in severe economic dislocation and political upheaval, and the detrimental consequences for economic welfare, physical health, and child education have been previously established in numerous studies. We also find the crisis adversely impacted population psychological well-being. We document substantial increases in several different dimensions of psychological distress among male and female adults across the entire age distribution over the crisis period. In addition, the imprint of the crisis can be seen in the differential impacts of the crisis on low education groups, the rural landless, and residents in those provinces that were hit hardest by the crisis. Elevated levels of psychological distress persist even after indicators of economic well-being such as household consumption had returned to pre-crisis levels suggesting long-term deleterious effects of the crisis on the psychological well-being of the Indonesian population.

Anxiety --- Depression --- Families --- Health care --- Health Monitoring and Evaluation --- Health research --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Mental --- Mental Health --- Mental Illness --- Screening --- Workers

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• Reference Manager
• EndNote
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The authors examine how a government-run cash transfer program targeted to poor mothers in rural Ecuador influenced the health and development of their children. This program is of particular interest because, unlike other transfer programs that have been implemented recently in Latin America, receipt of the cash transfers was not conditioned on specific parental actions, such as taking children to health clinics or sending them to school. This feature of the program makes it possible to assess whether conditionality is necessary for programs to have beneficial effects on children. The authors use random assignment at the parish level to identify the program's effects. They find that the cash transfer program had positive effects on the physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development of children, and the treatment effects were substantially larger for the poorer children than for less poor children. Among the poorest children in the sample, those whose mothers were eligible for transfers had outcomes that were on average more than 20 percent of a standard deviation higher than those for comparable children in the control group. Treatment effects are somewhat larger for girls and for children with more highly-educated mothers. The authors examine three mechanisms-better nutrition, greater use of health care, and better parenting-through which the transfers might influence child development. The program appeared to improve children's nutrition and increased the chance they were treated for helminth infections. But children in the treatment group were not more likely to visit health clinics for growth monitoring, and the mental health and parenting of their mothers did not improve.

Child development --- Clinics --- Families --- Health care --- Health Monitoring and Evaluation --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Mental --- Mental health --- Mortality --- Nutrition --- Nutritional status --- Parenting

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This paper analyzes the importance of strengthening the relationship of accountability between health service providers and citizens for improving access to and quality of health care. How this is to be achieved, and whether it works, however, remain open questions. The paper presents a randomized field experiment on increasing community-based monitoring. As communities began to more extensively monitor the provider, both the quality and quantity of health service provision improved. One year into the program, there are large increases in utilization, significant weight-for-age z-score gains of infants, and markedly lower deaths among children. The findings on staff behavior suggest that the improvements in quality and quantity of health service delivery resulted from an increased effort by the staff to serve the community. Overall, the results suggest that community monitoring can play an important role in improving service delivery when traditional top-down supervision is ineffective.

Antenatal care --- Clinics --- Community participation --- Family planning --- Health care --- Health Monitoring and Evaluation --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Immunization --- Intervention --- Primary health care --- Primary schools --- Workers

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The 1997 Indonesian financial crisis resulted in severe economic dislocation and political upheaval, and the detrimental consequences for economic welfare, physical health, and child education have been previously established in numerous studies. We also find the crisis adversely impacted population psychological well-being. We document substantial increases in several different dimensions of psychological distress among male and female adults across the entire age distribution over the crisis period. In addition, the imprint of the crisis can be seen in the differential impacts of the crisis on low education groups, the rural landless, and residents in those provinces that were hit hardest by the crisis. Elevated levels of psychological distress persist even after indicators of economic well-being such as household consumption had returned to pre-crisis levels suggesting long-term deleterious effects of the crisis on the psychological well-being of the Indonesian population.

Anxiety --- Depression --- Families --- Health care --- Health Monitoring and Evaluation --- Health research --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Mental --- Mental Health --- Mental Illness --- Screening --- Workers