Can Cash Transfers Help Children Stay Healthy?
Societies have a stake in ensuring that their youngest populations receive regular health check-ups and proper medical care when needed. Children whose health is protected and nurtured have a better chance of enrolling in school, learning, and grow...
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| Language: | English |
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Washington, DC
2012
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2012/05/16347923/can-cash-transfers-help-children-stay-healthy http://hdl.handle.net/10986/10414 |
| Summary: | Societies have a stake in ensuring that
their youngest populations receive regular health check-ups
and proper medical care when needed. Children whose health
is protected and nurtured have a better chance of enrolling
in school, learning, and growing to be healthy and
productive adults, which in turns helps a country's
development. So how can policymakers and development experts
promote this? Increasingly, cash transfers are being used to
encourage families to take basic preventive care measures,
including regular health care visits for babies and young
children and enrolling children in school. The transfers may
be conditional, meaning families get the money if they take
children for regular check-ups or enroll them in school; or
they can be unconditional, in which case families receive
the money without any strings attached, under the assumption
that the extra cash will give parents the financial
flexibility to ensure proper health visits and schooling.
Cash transfers are being used across the world to encourage
better use of education and health services by offering
economic incentives that can significantly boost the incomes
of poor households. Transfer programs can be conditional or
unconditional, and development experts are still evaluating
which works best and under what circumstances. Unconditional
cash transfers are easier and less expensive to implement,
which can make them very cost-effective. |
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