Pollution is a common byproduct of economic activity. Although policymakers should account for both the benefits and the negative externalities of polluting activities, it is difficult to identify those who are harmed and those who benefit from them. To overcome this challenge, our paper uses a...

Occupational licensing is intended to protect consumers. Whether it does so is an important, but unanswered, question. Exploiting variation across states and municipalities in the timing and details of midwifery laws introduced during the period 1900-1940, and using a rich data set that we...

Leveraging close elections to generate quasi-random variation in the religious identity of state legislators in India, we find lower rates of female foeticide in districts with Muslim legislators, which we argue reflects a greater (religious) aversion to abortion among Muslims. These districts...

Leveraging close elections to generate quasi-random variation in the religious identity of state legislators in India, we find lower rates of female foeticide in districts with Muslim legislators, which we argue reflects a greater (religious) aversion to abortion among Muslims. These districts...

Oil spills can lead to irreversible environmental degradation and pose hazards to human health. We are the first to study the causal effects of onshore oil spills on neonatal and infant mortality rates. We use spatial data from the Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor and the Demographic and Health...

The aim of the research is to examine the relationship between each of four factors affecting life expectancy and life expectancy and thereby provide primary data for government policy. First, the research chose four factors among many factors affecting life expectancy. The four factors chosen...

Oil spills can lead to irreversible environmental degradation and pose hazards to human health. We are the first to study the causal effects of onshore oil spills on neonatal and infant mortality rates. We use spatial data from the Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor and the Demographic and Health...

While land reforms are typically pursued in order to raise productivity and reduce inequality across households, an unintended consequence may be increased within-household gender inequality. We analyse a tenancy registration programme in West Bengal, and find that it increased child survival...

Dowry is often adduced as an explanation of son preference in India, but there is little evidence that dowry motivates son-preferring behaviours. On the premise that gold is an integral part of dowry, we use variation in gold prices to investigate this. First, we exploit a sharp unexpected rise...

In this study, the causal nexus between child mortality rate, fertility rate, GDP, household final consumption expenditure, and food production index in Ghana was investigated spanning from 1971 to 2013 using the Autoregressive and Distributed Lag (ARDL) method. The study tested for unit root,...

We examine causal links between energy consumption and health indicators (Mortality rate under-5, life expectancy, greenhouse effect, and government expenditure per capita) for a sample of 16 African countries over the period 1971-2010 (according to availability of countries' data). We use the...

Africa's quest to achieving improved health status and meeting the Millennium Development Goals targets cannot be effectively achieved without examining the quality of leadership, transitions and regimes and how they impact on the decisions and the policy effectiveness that bring about improved...

This paper analyses the health-improving effects of introducing four different constitutional social and environmental human rights (health, free education, adequate living (or welfare), and environment) and the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR) into national constitution and...

We present evidence on the health impacts and mechanisms of a large expansion in non-contributory health insurance in Mexico. The Seguro Popular (SP) was rolled out in 2002-2010 across municipalities, providing exogenous variation in access to health services without co-pays. Our intent-to-treat...

Are victims of human rights abuses better off with or without economic sanctions targeted at their perpetrators? We study this question in the context of a US human rights policy, Section 1502 of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. By discouraging companies from sourcing 'conflict minerals' from the...

Dowry is often adduced as an explanation of son preference in India, but there is little evidence that dowry motivates son-preferring behaviours. On the premise that gold is an integral part of dowry, we use variation in gold prices to investigate this. First, we exploit a sharp unexpected rise...

Pollution is a common byproduct of economic activity. Although policymakers should account for both the benefits and the negative externalities of polluting activities, it is difficult to identify those who are harmed and those who benefit from them. To overcome this challenge, our paper uses a...

While land reforms are typically pursued in order to raise productivity and reduce inequality across households, an unintended consequence may be increased within-household gender inequality. We analyse a tenancy registration programme in West Bengal, and find that it increased child survival...

Occupational licensing is intended to protect consumers. Whether it does so is an important, but unanswered, question. Exploiting variation across states and municipalities in the timing and details of midwifery laws introduced during the period 1900-1940, and using a rich data set that we...

Are victims of human rights abuses better off with or without economic sanctions targeted at their perpetrators? We study this question in the context of a US human rights policy, Section 1502 of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. By discouraging companies from sourcing 'conflict minerals' from the...

This paper uses the Bangladesh famine of 1974 as a natural experiment to estimate the impact of intrauterine malnutrition on sex of the child and infant mortality. In addition, we estimate the impact of malnutrition on post-famine pregnancy outcomes. Using the 1996 Matlab Health and...

Early life conditions have been linked to various domains of later life health, including cardiovascular outcomes. Using life history data from 13 European countries, I find that childhood socioeconomic status and measures of childhood health are related to hypertension, although there is cross...

The nexus between infant mortality decline and fertility decline has been the subject matter of several theoretical and empirical investigations. However, this relationship still remains an open question, as the literature provides only mixed empirical evidence. We investigate this relationship...

Today?s adolescents and youth face substantial physical, social, legal, and economic barriers to meeting their SRH potential. Key factors underlying these issues are a lack of adolescent SRH (ASRH) policies and access to accessible, affordable, and appropriate health services. The impact that...

Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (ASRH) is one of five areas of focus of the World Bank's Reproductive Health Action Plan 2010-2015 (RHAP), which recognizes the importance of addressing ASRH as a development issue with important implications for poverty reduction. Delaying childbearing...

This paper builds on the global experience and Mali?s context to identify an effective nutrition approach as well as costs and benefits of key nutrition programs, as part of a resilience agenda after the crisis. It is intended to help guide the selection of the most cost-effective interventions...