Targeted interventions in healthcare: the role of facility placement

Adequate targeting is a primary concern in the design of any social programme that attempts to reach a specific group in society. This paper studies the targeting of a healthcare-centre programme aimed at the poor that relies on household self-selection into the programme at the local level. We find that a key variable in determining utilisation of the health centres is location. Households living near a centre are substantially more likely to use it than households living further away. This points to the importance of facility placement in targeting self-selected health programmes to the poor.