Cash for Daughters? The Impact of Conditional Cash Transfers on Household Gender Composition

Abstract

This study evaluates the short-term impact of the Mukhyamantri Rajshri Yojana (MRY), a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program introduced in 2016 in Rajasthan, India, aimed at addressing gender disparities. The MRY offers financial incentives tied to milestones in the birth, health, and education of girls, and seeks to counteract the state's entrenched son preference. Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) methodology, this study compares gender outcomes in Rajasthan to those in neighboring states without similar interventions, including Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra, before and after the policy’s introduction. Using data from the 2015–16 and 2019–21 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), the analysis focuses on the probability of households having exactly one or two living daughters. Results show no evidence that MRY significantly increased the probability of having either one or two living daughters in the short run. In fact, the estimated effects are consistently negative or statistically insignificant across specifications. These findings suggest that conditional cash transfers alone may not be sufficient to shift deeply rooted son preference in the short term, which highlights the need for further research using the full DHS dataset and assessing longer-term impacts.