Health insurance and child mortality: Evidence from India
研究了印度全国健康保险计划（RSBY）对儿童死亡率的影响，发现该计划使婴儿死亡率降低6%，五岁以下儿童死亡率降低5%，效果集中在城市贫困家庭，并促进了生殖健康服务和儿童免疫等补充服务的利用。
Although less than a third of the population in developing countries is covered by health insurance, the number has been on the rise. Many countries have implemented national insurance policies in the past decade. However, there is limited evidence on their impact on child mortality in low- and middle-income contexts. Here we document the child mortality reducing effects of an at-scale national level health insurance policy in India. The Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), was rolled out across India between 2008 and 2013. Leveraging the temporal and spatial variation in program implementation, we demonstrate that it lowered infant mortality by 6% and child under five mortality by 5%. The effects are largely concentrated among urban poor households. In terms of mechanisms, we find that the program effects seem to be driven by increased usage of reproductive health services by mothers. We also demonstrate a rise in usage of complementary health services that were were not covered under the policy (such as child immunizations), which suggests that RSBY had significant positive spillover effects on health care usage.