Now-defunct Dhanalakshmi scheme improved outcomes for girl-child: Study

A new study by US-based researchers finds widespread social change and that preference for a girl child continues even after discontinuation of the schemed

A new analysis of the Centre’s Dhanalakshmi scheme of conditional cash transfer (CCT), which was launched in March 2008 with the objective of improving gender ratio in select districts of the country, has found that it helped shift 'son preference' norms even several years after the cash transfers stopped. 

The scheme was launched, according to a reply to a question in Parliament by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, with the objective of changing the perception of society towards the girl-child and to establish that she is also a productive member of the family. The Dhanalakshmi scheme was launched as a pilot project in 11 blocks across seven states. 

These blocks were in Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. A recent analysis of the project by Nabaneeta Biswas of West Virginia’s Marshall University, Christopher Cornwell and Laura Zimmermann, both of the University of Georgia, looked at the impact of the scheme on the Sirhind Block of Punjab’s Fatehgarh Sahib district and compared it to other districts in the state that were not covered by the scheme. Based on the 2001 Census, Fatehgarh Sahib had the worst child sex ratio in India, with 766 girls per 1,000 boys. Within the district, Sirhind block had a child sex ratio of 749 and was therefore chosen as a ‘treatment’ area for the programme. 

The financial milestones under the scheme were as follows: registering the birth of the girl entailed a cash transfer of Rs 5,000, which was equivalent to a month's household expenditure for an average family at the time. Additionally, a household could earn Rs 3,500 for completing primary school and Rs 3,750 for completing secondary school up to grade 8. Additionally, the beneficiary girl-child would receive a final payment of Rs 100,000 upon proof that she was unmarried at the age of 18. The programme stopped enrolling new beneficiaries in 2013, but the financial commitments to enrolled households continue to be honoured. 

According to the new paper, the scheme was an improvement on earlier schemes, such as Haryana’s Devi Rupak programme implemented in 2002, which actually worsened the sex ratio at birth by 1-2 per cent. The adverse effects were attributed to the strict eligibility requirement, including sterilisation and a maximum of two children (either one child or two girls) to remain eligible for future cash transfers. Subsequent girl child programmes learnt from the failures and did away with the sterilisation requirement and family size conditions, and were consequently more successful in achieving an improvement in child sex ratio. In the Dhanalakshmi scheme, for example, there was no restriction on fertility or the number of girls in a household who could be enrolled. 

In the Sirhind block, the analysis, based on the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data, has found that the cash transfers increased the probability of a girl birth by 5.5 percentage points, while only leading to a small rise in fertility. “This implies that the improvement in the sex ratio did not come from families having more children, but from parents opting to have a daughter when they would otherwise have had a son,” the paper states. Based on a back-of-the-envelope calculation, Dhanalakshmi was responsible for over 30 per cent of girl births in the treatment area but only 5 per cent of total births during the treatment period, it states. 

The study has also found that the scheme may have been successful in shifting son-preference norms. Conditional on the number of daughters from previous births, a mother’s stated preference for a son declined by about 5 percentage points, it states. It also determined that about half of the Dhanalakshmi improvement has continued even when parents can no longer receive any financial benefits for having a girl. 

Using household survey data from the 2007-08 and 2012-13 District Level Household and Facility Survey (DLHS) and the 2015-16 NFHS, the paper found that the programme increased immunisation rates by up to 7.1 percentage points (pp), breastfeeding rates by 2.4 pp and primary school enrolment by 4 pp. “Older girls who were born before the programme were eligible for continuing payments that encouraged school attendance and grade completion through the end of middle school. We show that 8-14-year-old girls increase their completed years of schooling by about a third of a year,” the researchers state. 

According to the researchers, girl child CCTs can be an effective policy tool to fight male child-preference, but that attention should be paid to the specific design features to avoid unintended adverse effects. Newer programmes share many of Dhanalakshmi’s features, including a less restrictive set of eligibility criteria that does not force parents to become sterilised or to limit their total number of children to benefit from the schemes, the paper notes. 

The analysis suggests that “giving parents this freedom was the right move and does not come at the cost of a large increase in fertility. Most additional girl births instead come from households that would otherwise have had a son, and older girls and mothers also benefit”.