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...

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...

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...

We examine the human development consequences of transferring responsibility for public service provision to local governments in India, using state-level variation in the timing of administrative decentralization reforms. We find that devolution of the responsibility for health functions from...

A recently growing literature evaluates the influence of early-life conditions on life-cycle health and mortality. This paper extends this literature by estimating the associations between birth-state infant mortality rates experienced during early-life (as a proxy for general disease...

We present a comprehensive evaluation of the health impacts of the introduction and expansion of a large non-contributory health insurance program in Mexico, the Seguro Popular (SP). SP provided access to health services without co-pays to individuals with no Social Security protection. We...

Beyond the usual macroeconomic stability, which is a necessity for economic growth, more focus should be placed on the effects that environmental quality has on infant mortality in sub‑Saharan Africa. Africa has always had the highest rate of infant mortality and the poorest environmental...

While several studies have examined the effect of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on economic development indicators, most of these studies focused on economic growth with very little attention paid to health outcomes. Moreover, among the studies that took account of health outcomes, none of...

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...

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

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 examines the effect of e-waste dumping sites on early child health. We focus on two major dumping sites in West Africa, in Ghana and Nigeria. We observe children born before and after the creation of these dumps, and estimate a difference-in-difference specification in which we...

We examine the effect of enforcing minimum quality standards (MQSs) on consumer health. In the late 1800s, the urban milk supply was regularly skimmed and diluted with water, but consumers could not easily determine its quality because dyes, caramel, and salt were added. To protect consumers,...

We evaluate the impact of a nationwide public health intervention on deaths from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), using population data from Denmark in a regression discontinuity research design. The information campaign - implemented primarily through a universal nurse home visiting program...

This paper investigates the returns to health care provision during the mortality transition. We construct a new panel data set covering German municipalities from 1928 to 1936. The endogeneity of health care supply is addressed by using the expulsion of Jewish physicians from statutory health...

Health resources are an important factor to reduce infant and child mortality. However, taking into account budget constraints, it is very difficult to increase public health resources for all regions within a country at the same time. For this reason, in this paper, we assess the effects of the...

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...

We examine the human development consequences of transferring responsibility for public service provision to local governments in India, using state-level variation in the timing of administrative decentralization reforms. We find that devolution of the responsibility for health functions from...

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...