The Seguro Popular Evaluation Project:

Evaluation Designs and Analysis Methods for Public Policies, with Application to the Mexican Seguro Popular de Salud (Universal Health Insurance) Program

A Seguro Popular health clinic in the Mexican state of Guerrero

An evaluation of the Mexican Seguro Popular program (designed to extend health insurance and regular and preventive medical care, pharmaceuticals, and health facilities to 50 million uninsured Mexicans), one of the world's largest health policy reforms of the last two decades. Our evaluation features a new design for field experiments that is more robust to the political interventions and implementation errors that have ruined many similar previous efforts; new statistical methods that produce considerably more reliable and efficient results using substantially fewer resources, assumptions, and data; and an implemention of these methods in the largest randomized health policy experiment to date. (See the Harvard Gazette story on this project.)

1. The evaluation design: Gary King, Emmanuela Gakidou, Nirmala Ravishankar, Ryan T. Moore, Jason Lakin, Manett Vargas, Martha María Téllez-Rojo, Juan Eugenio Hernández Ávila, Mauricio Hernández Ávila, and Héctor Hernández Llamas. A `Politically Robust' Experimental Design for Public Policy Evaluation, with Application to the Mexican Universal Health Insurance Program, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 26, Issue 3 (2007): 479-506. (Abstract: HTML | Article: PDF).

2. The statistical analysis methods: Kosuke Imai, Gary King, and Clayton Nall. The Essential Role of Pair Matching in Cluster-Randomized Experiments, with Application to the Mexican Universal Health Insurance Evaluation Statistical Science, Vol. 24, No. 1 (2009): pp. 29--53 (Abstract: HTML | Article: PDF), published with comments from four scholars and rejoinder by us, "Matched Pairs and the Future of Cluster-Randomized Experiments: A Rejoinder," Pp.65-72 (Abstract: HTML | Article: PDF)

3. The results of the evaluation: Gary King; Emmanuela Gakidou; Kosuke Imai; Jason Lakin; Ryan T. Moore; Clayton Nall; Nirmala Ravishankar; Manett Vargas; Martha María Téllez-Rojo, Juan Eugenio Hernández Ávila, Mauricio Hernández Ávila, and Héctor Hernández Llamas. Public Policy for the Poor? A Randomised Assessment of the Mexican Universal Health Insurance Programme, The Lancet, Vol. 373 (25 April 2009): 1447-1454. (Abstract: HTML | Article: PDF).

4. The replication data sets: Gary King; Emmanuela Gakidou; Kosuke Imai; Jason Lakin; Ryan T. Moore; Clayton Nall; Nirmala Ravishankar; Manett Vargas; Martha María Téllez-Rojo, Juan Eugenio Hernández Ávila, Mauricio Hernández Ávila, and Héctor Hernández Llamas. Replication Data for: Public Policy for the Poor? A Randomised Assessment of the Mexican Universal Health Insurance Programme, hdl:1902.1/11044 UNF:3:jeUN9XODtYUp2iUbe8gWZQ== Murray Research Archive [Distributor].