Health Impact Evaluation of Aspirational Districts Program in India: Evidence from National Family Health Survey

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe Aspirational District Program (ADP) is a unique initiative of Government of India launched in 2018 that aims to reduce inter-district multidimensional inequality. ADP aims to bring the most backward districts to catch up with the rest of the other districts in the country. The program is comprehensive in its scope as it targets the improvement of several key development indicators spanning health and nutrition, education, agriculture and water resources, financial inclusion and skill development and basic infrastructure indicators. Aspirational districts (ADs) are eligible for enhanced funding and priority allocation of various initiatives undertaken by the central and state governments. Our research estimates the causal impact of ADP on the targeted health and nutrition indicators using a combination of propensity score matching and difference-in-differences (PSM-DID). We use the fourth and fifth rounds of National Family Health Survey data collected in 2015-16 and 2019-21 respectively which serve as the pre and post-treatment data for our analysis. Moreover, we take advantage of the transparent mechanism outlined for the identification of aspirational districts under ADP, which we use for propensity score matching for our PSM-DID. We find a 1% increase in home deliveries conducted in the presence of skilled birth attendants in aspirational districts as a result of ADP. Other than this, we do not find evidence of positive or negative impact of ADP on any other health and nutrition indicators. Future research efforts should be made toward impact evaluation of ADP on all the targeted indicators, which will provide a comprehensive evaluation of ADP.