TY  - JOUR
AU  - Akresh,Richard
AU  - Walque,Damien de
AU  - Kazianga,Harounan
TI  - Alternative Cash Transfer Delivery Mechanisms: Impacts on Routine Preventative Health Clinic Visits in Burkina Faso
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17785
PY  - 2012
Y2  - January 2012
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17785
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17785.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Richard Akresh
Department of Economics
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1407 West Gregory Drive, 214 David Kinley Hall
Urbana, IL 61801
Tel: 217/333-3467
E-Mail: akresh@illinois.edu

Damien de Walque
The World Bank
Development Research Group
1818 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20433 
Tel: (202) 473-2517
E-Mail: ddewalque@worldbank.org

Harounan Kazianga
Department of Economics
Oklahoma State University
Business 324
Stillwater, OK 74078
Tel: (405) 744-5110
E-Mail: harounan.kazianga@okstate.edu
M3  - presented at "African Development Successes", August 3-5, 2011
AB  - We conducted a unique randomized experiment to estimate the impact of alternative cash transfer delivery mechanisms on household demand for routine preventative health services in rural Burkina Faso. The two-year pilot program randomly distributed cash transfers that were either conditional or unconditional and were given to either mothers or fathers. Families under the conditional cash transfer schemes were required to obtain quarterly child growth monitoring at local health clinics for all children under 60 months old. There were no such requirements under the unconditional programs. Compared with control group households, we find that conditional cash transfers significantly increase the number of preventative health care visits during the previous year, while unconditional cash transfers do not have such an impact. For the conditional cash transfers, transfers given to mothers or fathers showed similar magnitude beneficial impacts on increasing routine visits.
ER  -