Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkand, Orissa, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh. Between 2008 and 2013, 336,770 girls were enrolled in the scheme (see section A3, Appendix).

For their evaluation, Sekher and Ram (2015) collected household survey data from 4,000 beneficiary and non-beneficiary households in 8 blocks across 5 states (Punjab, Bihar, Orrisa, Andhra Pradesh, and Jharkand) between 2013 and 2014. They used a propensity score matching (PSM) approach to evaluate how the behavior of beneficiary and non-beneficiary households differed,<sup>10</sup> after controlling for characteristics that predict beneficiary status. They supplemented this analysis with key informant interviews and focus group discussions with surveyed household members.

The study found that girls in beneficiary households fared better. They were more likely to be enrolled in school, and their parents were more intent on them pursuing higher education. Parents in beneficiary households were also more willing to delay their daughter’s marriage, and less likely to view their daughter as a liability. However, many parents in beneficiary households also saw the terminal benefits of the scheme as means to meet their daughter’s marriage costs, and there is no evidence that the program changed families’ preference for girl children. From a program design perspective, one of the major drawbacks highlighted was that there were no incentives for girls to complete secondary education (ibid).

Impact evaluations of other CCT programs also provide important policy lessons. Anukriti (2017) conducts an evaluation of the _Devi Rupak_ program that was implemented in the state of Haryana in 2002/2003. The program had the dual aim of reducing fertility and balancing the sex ratio at birth in the state (see section A3, Appendix). For the analysis, Anukriti (2017) pooled women’s birth-history data from the NFHS and the District Level Household Survey of India (DLHS). To isolate the treatment effect of the scheme on the number and sex-composition of children, she uses a difference-in-difference approach that exploits variation in the year and state of program commencement, and variation in future incentives by the composition of existing children who were born before the program was launched.

Her results suggest that while families responded to the incentives to reduce fertility, they did not forgo their preference for sons despite the higher benefits provided for having daughters. The incentives provided for one-boy only were sufficient for couples to cease childbearing or sex select at first birth. However, the higher incentives provided for one-girl only were not sufficient for couples to forgo their demand for sons; these couples did not cease child-bearing after the first child and sex-selected for a son at second birth. The net result of this program was a reduction fertility, but an increase in the SRB (ibid).

A conceivable way to improve the short-term effectiveness of this kind of program in balancing the SRB would be to remove the financial benefits for the one-boy only families. However, even programs that do not provide benefits for male children show mixed results in lowering son

> 10 BeneficiaryA beneficiary household is one which has at least one girl child enrolled in the scheme at the time of the survey, and a non-beneficiary household is one which has an eligible girl (age 1-4 years) who is not enrolled in the scheme.

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