An Experiment in Incentive-Based Welfare: The Impact of PROGRESA on Health in Mexico

Paul J Gertler and Simone Boyce
Additional contact information
Paul J Gertler: UC-Berkeley & NBER

No 85, Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2003 from Royal Economic Society

Abstract: We investigate the impact of a unique anti-poverty program in Mexico on health outcomes. The program, PROGRESA, combines a traditional cash transfer program with financial incentives for families to invest in human capital of children. Our analysis takes advantage of a controlled randomized study design with household panel data. We find that the program significantly increased utilization of public health clinics for preventive care. The program also lowered the number of inpatient hospitalizations and visits to private providers, which is consistent with the hypothesis that PROGESA lowered the incidence of severe illness. We found a significant improvement in the health of both children and adults.

Keywords: anti-pverty program; child health; Mexico (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I38 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-06-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hea and nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://repec.org/res2003/Gertler.pdf full text

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecj:ac2003:85

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2003 from Royal Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().