Performance Pay and Information: Reducing Child Malnutrition in Urban Slums

Singh, Prakarsh (2011): Performance Pay and Information: Reducing Child Malnutrition in Urban Slums.

Abstract

This paper provides evidence for the effectiveness of performance pay to government workers and how performance pay interacts with demand-side information. In an experiment covering 145 child day-care centres, I implement three separate treatments. First, I engineer an exogenous change in compensation for childcare workers from fixed wages to performance pay. Second, I only provide mothers with information without incentivizing the workers. Third, I combine the first two treatments. This helps us identify if performance pay and public information are complements or substitutes in reducing child malnutrition. I find that combining incentives to workers and information to mothers reduces weight-for-age malnutrition by 4.2% in 3 months, although individually the effects are negligible. This complementarity is shown to be driven by better mother-worker communication and the mother feeding more calorific food at home. There is also a sustained long-run positive impact of the combined treatment after the experiment concluded.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Performance pay; Child malnutrition; Public health; Information; Complementarity; Nutrition; Public sector; Urban slums
• Subjects: J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J13 - Fertility ; Family Planning ; Child Care ; Children ; Youth; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I12 - Health Behavior; H - Public Economics > H4 - Publicly Provided Goods > H41 - Public Goods; M - Business Administration and Business Economics ; Marketing ; Accounting ; Personnel Economics > M5 - Personnel Economics > M52 - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects; L - Industrial Organization > L3 - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise > L38 - Public Policy; D - Microeconomics > D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics > D12 - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis; H - Public Economics > H7 - State and Local Government ; Intergovernmental Relations > H75 - State and Local Government: Health ; Education ; Welfare ; Public Pensions; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I18 - Government Policy ; Regulation ; Public Health; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty > I38 - Government Policy ; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs; D - Microeconomics > D6 - Welfare Economics > D61 - Allocative Efficiency ; Cost-Benefit Analysis; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J3 - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs > J33 - Compensation Packages ; Payment Methods

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