Does the conditional maternal benefit programme reduce infant mortality in India?

Abstract

Abstract India, which suffers from the largest number of infant deaths in the world, introduced the conditional maternity benefit programme, ‘Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana’ (IGMSY), to provide cash directly to pregnant and lactating women contingent on specified maternal and infant healthcare uses. This study estimates the impact of this programme on infant mortality for the first 12 months after birth, exploiting the pilot phase of IGMSY as a natural experiment in which 52 districts were randomly chosen as pilot districts. In the matched-pair difference-in-differences framework, the treatment effect on survival rate is estimated through the fully data-driven random survival forest approach. The results show that IGMSY reduced the infant mortality rate by 8.32% in treatment districts, with 1.53 fewer deaths per 1000 live births [95% prediction interval: 1.26–1.80]. The size of the effect substantially varies even within the first 12 months, indicating larger reductions in the neonatal period, and after the first 6 months. The results also reveal greater reductions among boys and children in urban areas.