RIEB Seminar

4:50pm～6:20pm

Topic

Receiving Maternal Care in Extreme Weather: Evidence of Mobile Money Use in Rural Uganda (with Tomoya Matsumoto)

Speaker

Hiroyuki EGAMI (PhD. Student, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS))

Abstract

Lack of cash on hand is a significant obstacle in accessing healthcare in developing countries. This study reports the assessment of the impact of mobile money services on maternal healthcare utilization in extreme weather—droughts and floods. Extreme weather conditions may negatively affect farm income and consequently discourage household members to seek healthcare; floods may also add to the challenge of traveling to a healthcare site. We hypothesize that mobile money adoption would motivate rural Ugandan women to receive maternal care in the face of such weather shocks. By receiving remittances utilizing mobile money, poor rural households may have more cash in hand to overcome weather shocks, which might change women's health-seeking behavior. We apply community- and mother-fixed effects models to longitudinal panel data. We find evidence that mobile money use absorbs the weather shocks and encourages utilization of facility delivery and skilled birth attendance. The robustness of the shock-smoothing effect is shown by a similar effect found in utilization of postnatal care. In contrast, the models fail to reject the null hypothesis of no shock-smoothing effect of mobile money on antenatal care. The results of the heterogeneity analysis imply two things; a flood is more harmful than a drought for the uptake of maternal care; mobile money is effective in facilitating maternal care against both droughts and floods.