Diarrhea and growth faltering in early childhood reduce survival and impair neurodevelopment. This paper assesses whether a national program in the Democratic Republic of Congo reduced diarrhea and stunting and strengthened local water and sanitation institutions. The program combined (i) funds...

India consistently ranks among the countries with the highest levels of ambient air pollution worldwide. At the same time, it faces significant challenges in neonatal health, with newborns having low average birth weights and a high incidence of being born within the low birth weight (LBW) and...

I evaluate the impact of abortion policies in sub-Saharan Africa to understand the potential consequences of a reduced international support for women's rights following the overturn of Roe v. Wade. I find that decriminalizing abortion reduces fertility through two complementary channels. For...

Education levels in Burkina Faso, especially among women, remain low despite efforts made by government authorities and development partners to implement priority area 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This situation presents difficulties for women in terms of their being...

This paper uses U.S. TRI data on industrial air lead emissions to provide IV estimates of the effects of air lead concentration on infant mortality. The causal effect of lead on infant mortality is identified by variation in air fugitive lead emissions interacted with wind speed near reporting...

In order to facilitate progress towards achieving the SDGs target regarding under-five child mortality in Bangladesh, the study explores the relevant mortality trends and makes a projection of the situation by 2030. The yearly dataset regarding mortality among children aged five and under (per...

We examine the multi-generational association of a nationwide social pension program in China, the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS). NRPS was rolled out on full scale in 2012, and rural enrollees over the age of 60 are eligible to receive an average of 102 CNY non-contributory monthly pension. We...

Family planning is a critical issue in countries, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa, where high fertility rates coexist with low contraceptive use alongside ad- verse perinatal outcomes. Using a combination of ethnographic, ecological, and folklore data, we investigate the role played in...

I evaluate the impact of abortion policies in sub-Saharan Africa to understand possible consequences from a reduced international support for women's rights following the overturn of Roe v. Wade. I find that decriminalizing abortion reduces fertility through two complementary channels. For...

This paper documents an important unintended consequence of expanding contraceptive access; namely that it creates positive selection in the health of the children being born. I use a family planning intervention which gave thousands of long-acting reversible contraceptives to reproductive-age...

Improvements in the health outcomes of women, young girls, and children will be key to Rwanda attaining three of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) focused on good health and well-being (SDG3), gender equality (SDG5), and reduced inequalities (SDG10). However, the direct and indirect...

Using data from 18 countries, we investigate the effects of child marriage bans on infant and under-5 mortality. We use variation in mothers' exposure to the ban across cohorts within each country and regional variation in "treatment intensity," calculated based on child marriage prevalence and...

This paper uses the implementation of a privately funded family planning program in Colorado to demonstrate that expanding access to long-acting reversible contraceptives to lower income women creates positive selection in the health of the children being born, reducing the rates of extremely...

This paper presents novel causal evidence on the effects of pro-natalist cash transfers on fertility, sex ratio at birth, and infant health. In the context of South Korea, I exploit rich spatial and temporal variation in cash transfers provided to families with newborn babies and the universe of...