Empowering women: how Mexico's conditional cash transfer programme raised prenatal care quality and birth weight
- 13 April 2010
- journal article
- Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in Journal of Development Effectiveness
- Vol. 2 (1), 51-73
- https://doi.org/10.1080/19439341003592630
Abstract
Data from a controlled randomised trial are used to estimate the effect of Mexico's conditional cash transfer programme, Oportunidades, on birth outcomes, and to examine the pathways by which it works. Birth weights average 127.3 grams higher, and low birth weight incidence is 44.5 per cent lower among beneficiary mothers. Better birth outcomes are explained entirely by better quality prenatal care. Oportunidades affected quality through empowering women with information about adequate healthcare content to expect better care, and with skills and social support to negotiate better care. Efforts to empower the less well-off are necessary for public services to fully benefit the poor.Keywords
This publication has 43 references indexed in Scilit:
- Nutritional supplementation in girls influences the growth of their children: prospective study in GuatemalaThe American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2009
- Health workers, quality of care, and child health: Simulating the relationships between increases in health staffing and child lengthHealth Policy, 2009
- Role of cash in conditional cash transfer programmes for child health, growth, and development: an analysis of Mexico's OportunidadesThe Lancet, 2008
- Conditional Cash Transfers for Improving Uptake of Health Interventions in Low- and Middle-Income CountriesJAMA, 2007
- Variations In Prenatal Care Quality For The Rural Poor In MexicoHealth Affairs, 2007
- Aceptabilidad de los suplementos alimenticios del programa OportunidadesSalud Publica de Mexico, 2006
- Public and private prenatal care providers in urban Mexico: how does their quality compare?International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 2006
- Antenatal care: provision and inequality in rural north IndiaSocial Science & Medicine (1982), 2004
- WHO antenatal care randomised trial for the evaluation of a new model of routine antenatal careThe Lancet, 2001
- Economics and Identity*The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2000