• Does Globalization Moderate the Benefit of Education Expansion? Evidence from the Double Burden of Malnutrition

with Anne-Celia Disdier and Fabrice Etilé

Abstract: We examine how rising women’s education interacts with economic and social globalization to shape the double burden of malnutrition (DBM), defined as the coexistence of maternal overweight and child stunting within the same household. Drawing on Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) from 1992–2017 across 38 low– and middle–income countries, we apply a subnational (DHS region) bivariate statistical decomposition framework that teases apart two forces: “structure effects,” capturing how globalization reshapes the education–DBM relationship, and “composition effects,” capturing the impact of expanding women’s education at a given level of globalization. Structure effects show that as social globalization deepens, the protective role of women’s education against DBM flips, becoming positively associated with DBM—especially in more urbanized regions. Composition effects further reveal that where economic globalization is already advanced, gains in women’s education are associated with higher, not lower, DBM prevalence. Taken together, these findings suggest that women’s education alone may be insufficient to counteract the nutritional risks linked to globalization, underscoring the need for complementary institutional, regulatory, and dietary interventions.

• The Enduring Imprint of Crisis: Childhood Shocks and Health Expenditure Protection in Mongolia

Abstract: This paper examines whether early-life exposure to systemic institutional collapse shapes economic behaviors in ways that persist into adulthood and across generations. Using Mongolia's 1990–1993 crisis as a formative shock and the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment, I test whether mothers who experienced institutional failure during childhood exhibit greater financial resilience to expenditure shocks decades later. Employing a difference-in-differences design with nationally representative household data (2014–2022), I compare cohorts defined by their developmental stage at the time of the crisis. Results show that households headed by mothers who experienced the Mongolian crisis during core childhood years (ages 6–11) experienced a 0.5 percentage-point smaller increase in their out-of-pocket health expenditure share during the COVID-19 pandemic. This mitigation is economically meaningful, equivalent to over 25% of the average monthly food bill. The effect is specific to health shocks, robust to controls for education and income, and absent in earlier- or later-exposed cohorts, highlighting the critical role of developmental timing. The findings demonstrate that a crisis-induced aversion to relying on formal systems can generate adaptive financial behaviors that enhance household resilience to future shocks.

•  Educating Mothers, Feeding Families: The Role of Maternal Schooling in Bangladesh’s Nutrition Transition

Abstract: Maternal education is widely promoted to improve nutrition. Yet its long-term effects on health outcomes are poorly understood, especially in contexts undergoing rapid dietary transitions This study leverages Bangladesh's 1994 Female Secondary School Stipend Program, a large scale policy shock that exogenously increased schooling among rural girls, to provide causal evidence on how maternal education shapes health decades later. Using a cohort based instrumental variables design applied to panel data from the Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey, I find that each additional year of maternal schooling significantly raises maternal Body Mass Index, with effects concentrated among women already in the normal to overweight range. Education improves dietary diversity but also increases sugar consumption, leaving overall diet quality unchanged. For children, maternal schooling enhances dietary quality and diversity, yet these improvements fail to translate into gains in Height-for-Age or Weight-for-Height, underscoring the limits of behavioral change amid persistent structural constraints. The findings reveal a dual role for maternal education: while it empowers better food diversity, it also accelerates exposure to processed foods, contributing to emerging overnutrition in rural Bangladesh. Policy efforts to improve nutrition must therefore pair educational investments with measures that reshape food environments.

• Destefanis, A. & Rahut, D. B. (2026). Parental migration and unconditional cash transfers for education. Evidence from the Smart Indonesia Program. ADBI Working Paper No. 1524. Tokyo: Asian Development Bank Institute. doi.org/10.56506/UXYV9623

• Destefanis, A., Rahut, D. B., Bera, S. & Behera, B. (2026). From Field to Future: A Critical Review of Good Governance for Sustainable Development in Developing Countries. ADBI Working Paper No. 1525. Tokyo: Asian Development Bank Institute. doi.org/10.56506/HJEB5352

• Rahut, D. B., & Destefanis, A. (2024). The multidimensional well-being of Asian senior citizens: A systematic review. ADBI Working Paper No. 1443. Tokyo: Asian Development Bank Institute. doi.org/10.56506/KAIT9216

• Destefanis, A., Sonobe, T., Rahut, D., & Aryal, J. P. (2021). Lessons for the informal sector from COVID-19. Asia Pathways. Tokyo: Asian Development Bank Institute.

• Forthcoming: “Mental Health and Life Satisfaction in Later Life: Evidence from Bangladesh” (with Tetsushi Sonobe, Dil B. Rahut and Shafiun N. Shimul). ADBI Special Issue. (Under final review)