ArticleJournal of development economics2016
Does a ban on informal health providers save lives? Evidence from Malawi.
Article in Journal of development economics, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 68 citations in OpenAlex.
- Interventions to reduce preterm birth and stillbirth, and improve outcomes for babies born preterm in low- and middle-income countries: A systematic review.Journal of global health · 2021Pooled it
- Right-sizing Incentives.Journal of development economics · 2026Article
- Understanding the perspective of traditional healers on their role within the Malawian healthcare system: a qualitative study in Thyolo District.BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2026Article
- Article
- The effect of health facility births on newborn mortality in Malawi.International journal of health economics and management · 2024Article
- Long-Term Health Benefits of Occupational Licensing: Evidence from Midwifery Laws.Journal of health economics · 2023Article
- When a Doctor Falls from the Sky: The Impact of Easing Doctor Supply Constraints on Mortality.The American economic review · 2023Article
- The effects of an epidemic on prenatal investments, childhood mortality and health of surviving children.Journal of population economics · 2023Article
- Does quality of antenatal care influence antepartum stillbirth in Hossana City, South Ethiopia?PLOS global public health · 2023Article
- Service delivery reform for maternal and newborn health in Kakamega County, Kenya: study protocol for a prospective impact evaluation and implementation science study.BMC public health · 2022Article
- Assessing provider performance of intrapartum care using simulated encounters and clinical vignettes: A comparison study from Tanzania.International journal of gynaecology and obstetrics: the official organ of the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics · 2022Article
- The impact of institutional delivery on neonatal and maternal health outcomes: evidence from a road upgrade programme in India.BMJ global health · 2022Article
- Impact of the Salud Mesoamerica Initiative on delivery care choices in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2022Article
- Money and my mind: Maternal cash transfers and mental health.Health economics · 2021Article
- Article
- Health system governance: a triangle of rules.BMJ global health · 2020Article
- Healthcare at the Beginning of Life and Child Survival: Evidence from a Cash Transfer Experiment in Nigeria.Journal of development economics · 2020Article
- Towards improved health service quality in Tanzania: contribution of a supportive supervision approach to increased quality of primary healthcare.BMC health services research · 2019Observational
- The Demand and Supply Side Determinants of Access to Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Services in Malawi.Maternal and child health journal · 2019Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Informal health providers ranging from drug vendors to traditional healers account for a large fraction of health care provision in developing countries. They are, however, largely unlicensed and unregulated leading to concern that they provide ineffective and, in some cases, even harmful care. A new and controversial policy tool that has been proposed to alter household health seeking behavior is an outright ban on these informal providers. The theoretical effects of such a ban are ambiguous. In this paper, we study the effect of a ban on informal (traditional) birth attendants imposed by the Malawi government in 2007. To measure the effect of the ban, we use a difference-in-difference strategy exploiting variation across time and space in the intensity of exposure to the ban. Our most conservative estimates suggest that the ban decreased use of traditional attendants by about 15 percentage points. Approximately three quarters of this decline can be attributed to an increase in use of the formal sector and the remainder is accounted for by an increase in relative/friend-attended births. Despite the rather large shift from the informal to the formal sector, we do not find any evidence of a statistically significant reduction in newborn mortality on average. The results are robust to a triple difference specification using young children as a control group. We examine several explanations for this result and find evidence consistent with quality of formal care acting as a constraint on improvements in newborn health.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.