Two Questions About Faith-Based Service Providers

February 28, 2014

Art of Service Delivery: Learning from Faith-inspired Health Care Providers

Quentin: Thanks for highlighting this issue. Two questions: Do we know why faith-based service providers deliver higher-quality service than, say, public providers? In "Working for God?", Reinikka and Svensson (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1542-4774.2010.tb00551.x/abstract) attributed it to intrinsic motivation. Are there other explanations? Secondly, is it possible to scale up faith-based services from their low market share? If the reason for the better service is intrinsic motivation, it may not be possible to find enough providers with that motivation. To attract more workers, you may have to pay them more, at which point the cost-effectiveness advantage may disappear. Incidentally, these are questions we will be discussing in the February 28-March 1 conference on the 10th anniversary of the 2004 World Development Report, "Making Services Work for Poor People" (http://go.worldbank.org/IMORKI2LC0).

This post was originally written for the World Bank's "Investing in Health" blog.

About the Author

Shantayanan Devarajan

Shantayanan ("Shanta") Devarajan is professor of the practice of development at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He was previously the senior director for Development Economics (DEC) and a former acting chief economist of the World Bank Group. His previous roles at the World Bank include chief economist of the Middle East and North Africa region, principal economist and research manager for public economics in the Development Research Group, and chief economist for the Africa region and Human Development Network's South Asia group.