The quality of evidence on the effect of financial incentives on breastfeeding practice s was low but seems to indicate a potential positive impact on receiving colostrum , early initiation of breastfeeding , exclusive breastfeeding and mean duration of exclusive breastfeeding .
There is no effect of financial incentives on immunization coverage although there was moderate quality evidence of conditional cash transfers leading to a small but non-significant increase in coverage of age-appropriate immunization .
Conclusions Financial incentives may have potential to promote increased coverage of several important child health interventions , but the quality of evidence available is low .
The more pronounced effects seem to be achieved by programs that directly removed user fees for access to health services .
Some indication of effect were also observed for programs that conditioned financial incentives on participation in health education and attendance to health care visits .
This finding suggest that the measured effect may be less a consequence of the financial incentive and more due to conditionalities addressing important informational barriers
Background Financial incentives are widely used strategies to alleviate poverty , foster development , and improve health .
Cash transfer programs , microcredit , user fee removal policies and voucher schemes that provide direct or indirect monetary incentives to households have been used for decades in Latin America , Sub-Saharan Africa , and more recently in Southeast Asia .
Until now , no systematic review of the impact of financial incentives on coverage and uptake of health interventions targeting children under 5 years of age has been conducted .
The objective of this review is to provide estimates on the effect of six types of financial incentive programs : ( i ) Unconditional cash transfers ( CT ) , ( ii ) Conditional cash transfers ( CCT ) , ( iii ) Microcredit ( MC ) , ( iv ) Conditional Microcredit ( CMC ) , ( v ) Voucher schemes ( VS ) and ( vi ) User fee removal ( UFR ) on the uptake and coverage of health interventions targeting children under the age of five years .
Effect of Ecuador's cash transfer program (Bono de Desarrollo Humano) on child development in infants and toddlers: a randomized effectiveness trial.
We examined the effects of Ecuador 's  Bono de Desarrollo Humano (BDH)--an unconditional cash transfer program that was rolled-out using a r and omized design --on health and development outcomes in very young children . Communities that were r and omly assigned to the treatment group began receiving the BDH  in 2004 and those r and omly assigned to the comparison group began receiving benefits two years later . Families enrolled in the BDH  received a monthly cash stipend ( $ 15USD ) representing an approximate 6 - 10 % increase in household income . Participants analyzed in this study are children aged 12 - 35 months from treatment ( n = 797 ) and comparison ( n = 399 ) communities in rural and urban Ecuador . Main outcomes measured were language skills ( the Fundación MacArthur Inventorio del Desarollo de Habilidades Comunicativas-Breve ) , height-for-age z-score , and hemoglobin concentration . Results indicate that in rural areas , being r and omized to receive the BDH in very early childhood led to significantly better performance on the number of words a child was saying , and on the probability that the child was combining two or more words . There were no significant effects on language development for children in urban areas and there were no effects on height-for-age z-score or hemoglobin concentration in rural or urban areas . A limited number of potential pathways with respect to cognitive/ language stimulation , health behaviors , and parenting quality were also explored . Findings indicate that compared to children in comparison areas , rural children in treatment areas were more likely to have received vitamin A or iron supplementation and have been bought a toy in the past six months . This study provides evidence for significant benefits of an unconditional cash transfer program for language development in very young children in rural areas
The quality of evidence on the effect of financial incentives on breastfeeding practice s was low but seems to indicate a potential positive impact on receiving colostrum , early initiation of breastfeeding , exclusive breastfeeding and mean duration of exclusive breastfeeding .
There is no effect of financial incentives on immunization coverage although there was moderate quality evidence of conditional cash transfers leading to a small but non-significant increase in coverage of age-appropriate immunization .
Conclusions Financial incentives may have potential to promote increased coverage of several important child health interventions , but the quality of evidence available is low .
The more pronounced effects seem to be achieved by programs that directly removed user fees for access to health services .
Some indication of effect were also observed for programs that conditioned financial incentives on participation in health education and attendance to health care visits .
This finding suggest that the measured effect may be less a consequence of the financial incentive and more due to conditionalities addressing important informational barriers
Background Financial incentives are widely used strategies to alleviate poverty , foster development , and improve health .
Cash transfer programs , microcredit , user fee removal policies and voucher schemes that provide direct or indirect monetary incentives to households have been used for decades in Latin America , Sub-Saharan Africa , and more recently in Southeast Asia .
Until now , no systematic review of the impact of financial incentives on coverage and uptake of health interventions targeting children under 5 years of age has been conducted .
The objective of this review is to provide estimates on the effect of six types of financial incentive programs : ( i ) Unconditional cash transfers ( CT ) , ( ii ) Conditional cash transfers ( CCT ) , ( iii ) Microcredit ( MC ) , ( iv ) Conditional Microcredit ( CMC ) , ( v ) Voucher schemes ( VS ) and ( vi ) User fee removal ( UFR ) on the uptake and coverage of health interventions targeting children under the age of five years .