Andréa Renk

(UNamur)

will give a presentation on

Sterilizations and immunization in India: the Emergency experience (1975-77)

Abstract:

This paper investigates whether the intense sterilization campaign in 1976-77 in India led to a decrease in demand for health services, with the idea that this coercive campaign could have generated distrust. We use administrative data to discuss and build a measure of coercion intensity. Outcome-wise, we focus on immunization and institutional delivery using survey data collected only a few years after the event. We take advantage of retrospective data to build a panel, to compare outcomes across siblings or children within the same village based on children’s birth date. Results show a strong decrease in use of formal medicine, with a decline of 17% in the probability to receive any vaccine post-Emergency when coercion increases by one standard deviation. Heterogeneity analysis highlights distance to health infrastructure and parents’ literacy matter