Cash aid is a blessing for infant health and young children: goats and soda: NPR

To save the lives of infants and young children who live in low -income countries, there is a handful of tried and tested tools, such as anti -malaria, bedbacks and vaccines. The results of a huge experience in rural Kenya suggest another: criticism.

Infants born to people who received $ 1,000, do not dance to the wires, they were Nearly half is likely to die As an infancy, they were born to people who did not receive money, according to a report published on Monday by the National Office for Economic Research. Researchers in the study found that the average cash deaths in children under the age of 55 %.

This paper says really well, and the same result is very amazing. ” HendersonAn economist at Drake University who did not participate in the study. Historically, it was difficult to study the effects of cash transfers on deaths with any kind of rigor, “he says.

Over the past decade or so, it was the idea of giving people who live in poverty simply Gain tractionPartially evidence that it can work. The best evidence comes from what researchers call random experiments. In this preparation, The experimental group gets moneyThe control group does not do, and researchers are looking for differences in measurable results, such as income or savings, to understand the critical difference.

While studies were found Clear links Between cash transfers and economic well -being, it was difficult to determine health, especially for the most amazing health results.

He says that infants and children in Kenya countryside are higher than it is in the United States. Edward MiguelEconomist at the University of California Berkeley and co -author. “But it is still a relatively rare event for a child to die. Statistically, this means that we need a really large sample size to obtain accurate and reliable estimates of the effect of cash on children’s deaths.”

1000 to 10,000 families

In 2014, GiveDirect began a huge experience. Over the next three years, they have given $ 1,000 for more than 10,000 low -income families across 653 villages in western Kenya.

“It has been designed as a random control.” Miguel says. “So some areas got more money. Some of them got less money, and we can study the impact of that money.”

To study this effect, collect Miguel and his colleagues a lot of data. They completed a kind of birth census for all children who were born and died before the age of 5 years during the previous decade in the study area. “We ended up collecting data on more than 100,000 births. It took a year to do it.”

They found that criticism had great benefits for infants and children, especially when they were delivered near birth.

Cash payments were associated with a 48 % decrease in infant mortality, from about 40 deaths per 1,000 births to about 21 deaths. The death of children under the age of five was 45 % less in families who got money, and decreased to 32 per 100,000 births from 57.

Cash played a major role in reducing deaths during childbirth and in the few weeks that followed a decrease of 70 % compared to controls. “This really indicated a major role to access health services at the moment of delivery is very important,” says Miguel.

Why reduce money deaths

For many who live in rural areas in sub -Saharan Africa, access to a healthy facility and payment price there can be difficult, especially when pregnant.

“When I worked in rural parts of Uganda, one of the things that was really clear for pregnant women was that they did not attend prenatal care, because it is very difficult to reach a health care facility,” he says. Myriam Laker -okettaGreat Research Adviser at Gifedoic.

She says: “You make the decision between them, if I go to get prenatal care and my family sleep hungry, or I should stay at home and I hope that my child is fine because I do not feel the disease and we can eat a meal on that day,” she says, because often women have to abandon work for one day to go to the doctor. “These are some decisions that people must make.”

Additional money seems to make these decisions easier, as long as healthcare facilities are not very far.

Cash has made more teams for families living nearly 30 minutes or less than the health care facility equipped with doctors. When the distance is larger, the benefits of criticism begin to infants, although it does not completely disappear.

The researchers saw 45 % of hospital delivery operations among pregnant people who received money from those who did not do it. Lacketa says that it is often more expensive to be delivered in the hospital than a smaller clinic. “We have given people a way to reach the care they need and not to take some of these difficult options between obtaining care and feeding the family.”

Additional criticism also helped put more food on the table. The study found that children were 44 % less than the possibility of going to the hungry bed in families who received cash. The women who got money during pregnancy also worked about half of nearly 21 hours a week – in the first and months that followed the birth of women who did not get the money. Lacker Okita says that work in these rural areas can impose physical taxes.

“This is great for the mother’s health, but it also gives time to her child to develop well,” she says. “It is also available after the child’s birth to transfer the child to any early health visits.”

“Very important” data point

In total, I liked the results Harun RichtermanA doctor studying poverty reduction at the University of Pennsylvania and has not participated in the study.

“It is one data point, but it is a very important data point. We can be very sure that in this case, the money caused these benefits in the deaths we see,” he says. In an environment Foreign aid shrinkingHe says criticism can provide a simple way to reduce infant mortality.

The size of the difference that the money can, partially, may depend on the ease of using people in other locations of additional money to obtain health care.

“I think this paper confirms the point that it is truly suitable for health care that creates all the teams,” said Henderson, an economist in Drake and the author of the book. Bad comfortWhy do people give money not the solution to global poverty. “It only happens that in this particular place, people need money to reach health care.”

This is the case in many places in sub -Saharan Africa after years of investing in strengthening health care systems, says Laker Okita, but not all.

“The answer does not give money alone, or we focus only on improving the health care system,” she says. “What is clear in this study is that you need to work together.”