We assess the short-term impacts of the Doctors-to-the-Barrios (DTTB), a national physician deployment program in the Philippines that augments the supply of rural healthcare workers in underserved areas, on several health sector outcomes. Using regression discontinuity design, we find that the DTTB program doubles modern contraceptive-use prevalence and reduces child underweight prevalence in poor municipalities, coinciding with an increased propensity of having rural health physicians in the community. We estimated an internal program rate of return of 15.9%, which is likely to be severely understated.
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