The association between hygiene, sanitation, and health is well documented, yet thousands of children die each year from exposure to contaminated fecal matter. At the same time, evidence on the effectiveness of at-scale behavior change interventions to improve sanitation and hygiene practices is...

This paper estimates two sources of benefits related to sanitation infrastructure access on early childhood health: a direct benefit a household receives when moving from open to fixed-point defecation or from unimproved sanitation to improved sanitation, and an external benefit (externality)...

The Impact Evaluation in Practice handbook is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to impact evaluation for policymakers and development practitioners. The book incorporates real-world examples to present practical guidelines for designing and implementing evaluations. Readers will gain...

Paying for performance (P4P) provides financial incentives for providers to increase the use and quality of care. P4P can affect health care by providing incentives for providers to put more effort into specific activities, and by increasing the amount of resources available to finance the...

The authors examine how governments finance and allocate public spending, with an eye to developing strategies for pricing publicly provided health services. They also examine the implications of current policy and the possibility for rationalizing competing government priorities. Because...

Despite the importance of housing for people's well-being, there has been little work done to assess the causal impact of housing and housing improvement programs on health and welfare. In this paper the authors help fill this gap by investigating the impact of a large-scale effort by the...

Over 5 billion people worldwide are exposed to unsafe water. Given the obstacles to ensuring sustainable improvements in water supply infrastructure and the unhygienic handling of water after collection, household water treatment and storage (HWTS) products have been viewed as important...

Carefully designed and implemented evaluations can improve people’s welfare, and enhance development effectiveness. The paper investigates institutions in Mexico, Chile,and Colombia, and shows that for the successful inception of an institutionalised system for evaluation, three common factors...

Carefully designed and implemented evaluations can improve people's welfare and enhance development effectiveness. This paper investigates institutions in Mexico, Chile, and Colombia, and shows that for the successful inception of an institutionalised system for evaluation, three common factors...

The debate on whether natural disasters cause significant macroeconomic impacts and indeed hinder development is ongoing. Most analyses along these lines have focused on impacts on gross domestic product. This paper looks beyond this standard national accounting aggregate, and examines whether...