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Summary The paper evaluates an Indian maternal conditional cash transfer scheme. Launched in 2005, the program gives women cash transfers for receiving maternal and child health care services. Data are drawn from India’s District Level Household Survey to evaluate the program’s impact. Results indicate that the program had a limited overall effect: relative to the broader population, the targeted population experienced a 3 percentage point increase in medically supervised births, but no increase in ante-natal or post-natal care. We do however, find evidence of heterogeneity of impact. Women without any formal education and women in rural areas experience disproportionate gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The impact of informal care responsibilities on the willingness and ability of caregivers to undertake paid employment has been the subject of a number of studies. In contrast, the effect of employment status on willingness to undertake informal care has been less well explored. This paper concentrates on this less-studied direction of causality using the data provided by 15 waves of the British Household Panel Survey. We find that employment participation and earnings both impact negatively on willingness to supply informal care. This evidence has implications for health and social care policy since informal care has been shown to be a significant substitute for formal long-term care. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper uses the British Household Panel Survey for the years 1996-2000 to investigate the relationship between saving and private medical insurance in the UK. Because the National Health Service (NHS) gives comprehensive health coverage and is generally free at source, one would not expect private medical insurance to crowd-out saving. However, the NHS being characterised by long waiting lists and generally poor quality, many people prefer to use private health services. In such circumstances, those individuals who are not covered by private medical insurance, and who are therefore more exposed to facing unexpected out-of-pocket private health care expenditures or income losses while waiting for public treatment might save more for precautionary reasons than those who are covered. According to our findings, which are based on a wide range of econometric specifications, there is a positive association between insurance coverage and saving, suggesting that private medical insurance does not generally crowd-out private saving. However, we found some evidence of crowding-out in those areas where the quality of medical facilities is perceived as poor, and in rural areas, characterised by fewer NHS providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]