Lack of cash on hand is a significant obstacle in accessing healthcare services in developing countries. Many expectant mothers in the least developed countries do not receive sufficient care during pregnancy due to financial constraints. If such hurdles in accessing healthcare can be overcome, it will contribute to reduction in maternal and newborn mortality, which is a key target of Sustainable Development Goal 3. This study reports the first assessment of the impact of mobile money services on maternal care utilization. We hypothesize that mobile money adoption would motivate rural Ugandan women to receive antenatal care and to deliver their children at health facilities or with skilled birth attendants. By receiving remittances utilizing mobile money, poor rural households may obtain more cash in hand, which might change women’s health-seeking behavior. We apply community- and mother-fixed effects models with heterogeneity analysis to longitudinal panel data (the RePEAT [Research on Poverty, Environment, and Agricultural Technology] survey) of three waves (2009, 2012, and 2015). The analysis uses pregnancy reports of 2007–2015 from 586 rural Ugandan households. We find suggestive evidence that mobile money adoption positively affects the take-up of antenatal care. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that mobile money brings a larger benefit to geographically challenged households by easing their liquidity constraint as they face higher cost of traveling to distant health facilities. The models failed to reject the null hypothesis of no mobile money effect on the delivery-related outcome variables. This study suggests that promoting financial inclusion by means of mobile money motivates women in rural and remote areas to make antenatal care visits while the evidence of such effect is not found for take-up of facility delivery or delivery with skilled birth attendants.
The number of people who play video games has become close to three billion during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, video games' causal effect on well-being has been understudied, and most studies have relied on correlation. We select k6 and SWLS for measuring well-being and apply causal inference methods. We take advantage of a natural experiment where lotteries for purchasing video game consoles---the Nintendo Switch and the PlayStation 5---created a random variation in access to video games. Using online surveys with 100,000 responses from Japanese aged 10-69 during the COVID-19 pandemic, we find that video game play impacts users' well-being positively. Winning a game console lottery positively affects well-being by 0.2 SD for the Nintendo Switch and 0.1-0.2 SD for the PlayStation 5. The instrumental variable approach indicates that owning a new game console has a positive impact on well-being by 0.6 SD for the Nintendo Switch and 0.1-0.2 SD for the PlayStation 5. In addition, a machine learning method reveals a striking difference between the heterogeneous effects of the two video game consoles. While the PlayStation 5 effect is smaller for teenagers, married, non-gamers, and females, such heterogeneity is not found for the Nintendo Switch effect.
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