Performance Pay and Malnutrition

Prakarsh Singh and Sandip Mitra ()
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Sandip Mitra: Indian Statistical Institute

No 10084, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We carry out a randomized controlled experiment in West Bengal, India to test three separate performance pay treatments in the public health sector. Performance is judged on improvements in child malnutrition. We exogenously change wages of government employed child care workers through either absolute or relative incentives. We also test for the impact of high and low absolute incentives. Results show that high absolute incentives reduce severe malnutrition by 6.3 percentage points over three months. Result is consistent with a reported increase in protein-rich diet at home in the high absolute treatment. There are no significant effects on health outcomes of other incentive arms. Results remain robust to propensity score matching, reversion- to-mean and a placebo check.

Keywords: absolute and relative incentives; child malnutrition; performance pay (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I38 J38 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2016-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-dev, nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published as 'Incentives, Information and Malnutrition: Evidence from an experiment in India' in: European Economic Review, 2017, 93, 24-46.

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