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This paper examines the effect of the extension of a large-scale conditional cash transfer program implemented by the National Health Mission on maternal health outcomes in India. I look at the supply-side of this policy by exploiting the variations in time and district-level program intensity across the targeted population. I apply a difference-in-differences strategy by using data from the second and fourth phases of the District Level Household and Facility Survey and exploit the variation in the number of healthcare workers, introduced by the policy, over time. I find that the policy made women from poorer households better off in terms of accessing various healthcare services, such as antenatal care, and immunization and brought about a fall in the fertility trends of women living in a district with more community health workers, in the long term.

In this paper, we examine the impact of a child labor ban, the Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 1986, on child marriage in India. First, we use data from three rounds of the National Sample Survey exploiting variation in time, ages of children, and the intensity of child labor in a particular state. Here we find that the relative probability of child employment decreases after the ban and this is more pronounced in states which had a higher intensity of child labor before the policy. Next, we use data from the District Level Household & Facility Survey utilizing variation in women’s exposure to the policy and their state of residence in a difference-in-differences framework to show that there is a decrease in the probability of marriage before 18 for women who were married in states with higher intensities of child labor before the ban. Thus, policies that reduce child labor might have positive spillovers and result in a reduction of child marriage.