The  power  of  information  and  motivation  on  maternal  and   child  health  knowledge:     an  application  with  ad-hoc  SMS  in  Mexico ’ s  Prospera  program  (with  Manett  Vargas)

Abstract: Access to information is a necessary, but not sufficient condition to achieve health improvements. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of four interventions that seek to improve maternal and early childhood health outcomes. The interventions being evaluated focus on empowering, motivating and providing behaviorally-designed messages delivered to beneficiaries by SMS. This paper (the first of a series) investigates the impact of the program on women’s knowledge about adequate care practices, which is a key mechanism to achieve health improvements. For such purpose, an original battery of 21 questions was designed, gathered and analyzed. To assess the impact on knowledge, we compared the responses of two sets of women: one group had already received a key piece of information (through SMS), while the other were still about to receive it. By comparing both groups we find a 12 percent increase in the proportion of correct answers as a result of the information delivery. Interestingly, an intervention focused on framing messages by adding motivationally-charged content achieves an increase in knowledge even before receiving the information, but is later caught up by the rest of the interventions.