The studies in this special issue look at various schemes, in their performance, impact and efficiency, providing a way forward in social policy points to approaches more embedded with the strategic changes in the Indian society. The contributors of the special issue pose some challenging...

Worldwide, 1.6 million girls are "missing" at birth every year. One policy tool to improve the sex ratio is a conditional cash transfer that pays parents to invest in daughters, but existing evidence on their effectiveness is sparse. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we evaluate the...

How is prenatal sex selective behaviour influenced by the presence of cheap fetal gender identification technology and financial incentives? We analyze a conditional cash transfer program in India called Janani Suraksha Yojna. By providing access to prenatal sex detection technology like the...

For many years, the Punjab province of India has had the dubious distinction of having the worst sex ratio among all other states of India. In recent years, both the child sex ratio and the overall sex ratio has shown a marked improvement in the state. This paper analyses whether the improvement...