An Evaluation of the Indian Child Nutrition and Development Program

The Indian Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) aims to improve the physical and psychological well-being of children younger than five. However, previous evaluations find that ICDS fails to significantly impact child stunting and that program placement is faulty. My results contradict the lack of a significant treatment effect, but are consistent with problematic program placement. Previous analyses of ICDS used probit to study placement, but the distribution of state-wise ICDS coverage is negatively skewed violating the normality assumption of probit. To address this, I use beta regression to study placement and compare results with probit analysis. In addition, using Propensity Score Matching (PSM) I find evidence of a significant, positive average and quantile treatment effects on stunting. Data are from the most recent Indian Family and Health Survey (NFHS-3).