Eeshani Kandpal is a former Senior Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank. Her research examines two types of financial incentives: (1) cash transfers to poor households and (2) pay-for-performance contracts with health workers and facilities to improve the provision of primary health care. She is particularly interested in design elements like the targeting mechanisms of cash transfers and optimal pricing regimes for health service delivery as well as spillovers from incomplete contracts or targeting methods. She is an associate editor for the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and a lead author of the forthcoming World Bank Policy Research Report titled Financial Incentives for Effective Coverage in Health. Her work has been covered by NPR and VoxDev as well as several media outlets in India and the Philippines. Eeshani was born and raised in India and has a PhD from the University of Illinois and a BA from Macalester College.
In many low- and middle-income countries, health coverage has improved dramatically in the past two decades, but health outcomes have not. As such, effective coverage—a measure of service delivery that meets a minimum standard of quality—remains unacceptably low. "Improving Effective Coverage in Health: Do Financial Incentives Work?" examines one specific policy approach to improving effective coverage: financial incentives in the form of performance-based financing (PBF), a package reform that typically includes performance pay to frontline health workers as well as facility autonomy, transparency, and community engagement.
Policy Research Talk: The Unintended Consequences of Cash Transfers
December 27, 2019
Cash transfers are a major anti-poverty tool, reaching 400 million poor households around the world. While there may be no more direct means to reduce poverty than providing cash, even this straightforward intervention can carry unintended consequences that undermine its intended goal. In this Policy Research Talk, Eeshani Kandpal discussed current evidence on cash transfers and illustrated how these programs can generate unintended spillovers with an example from Pantawid, a conditional cash transfer program that benefits over four million Filipino households.
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