Description:
Many countries have adopted maternal benefit schemes intended to bolster facility-based birth rates and demand for antenatal care. We study the impacts of one such program, a multi-faceted cash-transfer program on maternal health-seeking and birth outcomes. Ecuador’s Desnutrition Cero program sought to create incentives for care-seeking through cash transfers conditional on ante and postnatal care, as well as lump-sum grants prior to delivery. We exploit a discontinuity created by the program's targeting method to identify the causal impact of the program, and do not find evidence of improvement in antenatal care seeking, trained or facility-based delivery care, or birth outcomes. There is suggestive evidence that mothers substituted away from private care. We show that our results are robust to a number of specification and sensitivity analyses. Our results stand in contrast with evidence from other maternity benefit schemes, which often show large improvements in facility-based delivery care and child vaccination