Evaluation of the impact of social safety net program on health care utilization in Togo

This paper provides new evidence on the impact of social safety net programs on household health care utilization. Given the voluntary nature of participation in social safety nets by households, we exploit the uneven deployment of the program in rural areas as a natural experiment to explore causal inference. However, they do ensure good health status of households through different transmission channels, which reduces health care utilization. Policy makers should be encouraged to expand this program to other non-beneficiary groups.