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September 30, 2025Open Access

The Importance of Being Local? Administrative Decentralisation and Human Development

Key Points

Devolving public service responsibilities has not led to improvements in child mortality rates.
Partial devolution without necessary powers worsens outcomes for neonatal and under-5 mortality.
State-level analysis demonstrates that reforms did not produce expected benefits in education completion.
Findings highlight the need for full authority in health and education for effective local governance.

Abstract

Abstract We examine the human development consequences of transferring responsibility for public service provision from state to local governments in India using state-level variation in the timing of administrative decentralisation reforms. We find that devolving responsibility for health and education functions does not improve child mortality or school completion. Further, partial devolution of service responsibility, without concomitant authority over personnel or taxation, results in a significant worsening of neonatal, infant and under-5 child mortality. Our results cannot be attributed to differential pre-trends, omitted variables bias, or heterogeneous treatment effects.

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