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Unequal Households or Communities? Decomposing the Inequality in Nutritional Status in South Asia (conditionally accepted; with Caitlin Brown, Jean Lee, and Anaise Williams).
Across South Asia, within-community inequality explains 3.5 times as much of the variation as within-household inequality. Community sanitation and health facility quality are especially important correlates of nutritional status. We show that community sanitation is an effective, and possibly cost-effective, targeting alternative to household wealth, particularly in countries with a high degree of inequality in both outcomes and access.
The effect of cash transfers on women's productive activities and subjective well-being: evidence from an ultra-poor setting (revision requested; with Modeste Daye and Pascale Schnitzer)
Using a discontinuity in the eligibility rule for an unconditional cash transfer in Chad, we show that household consumption increases by 46.7 percent and chronic food insecurity decreases by 34 percent. Recipient households are 59.8 percentage points more likely to start a non-agricultural business, report a 300 percent increase in the value of non-agricultural business assets held, and a 240 percent increase in the value of harvest produced. These impacts are driven by women's entrepreneurial activities, including a 180 percent increase in profits from non-agricultural businesses. Concomitantly, we estimate an 11.6 percent increase in self-efficacy, a 20 percent reduction in depression, a 35 percent improvement in physical wellbeing, and a 19.4 percent improvement in perceived social status. While self-efficacy increases for both men and men, the mental and physical health impacts are concentrated among women and the social status impacts in men. Finally, we estimate a benefit-cost ratio of up to 1.34, suggesting that the program may be cost-effective after one year. The impact on women's business profits comprises the largest pecuniary benefit of the transfers.
From Childhood Abduction to Adulthood: Enduring Consequences for Women in Uganda (revision requested; with Alessandra Cassar; Miranda Lambert; Christine Mbabaze Mpyangu; and Danila Serra)
Girls and women are disproportionately likely to experience forced displacement and physical and sexual violence during armed conflicts. Between the mid-1980s and the mid-2000s, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) abducted over 50,000 people in Northern Uganda, including more than 25,000 children. We study approximately 550 women in Northern Uganda, half of whom were abducted either before or during adolescence. Leveraging the previously documented plausible exogeneity of LRA abductions with survey data and incentivized behavioral games, we assess the long-term effects of childhood abduction on a range of socioeconomic and mental health outcomes, as well as on behavioral traits and preferences. Childhood abduction reduces educational attainment but has little lasting impact on economic activity, marriage outcomes, or risk tolerance. In contrast, twenty years after the conflict ended, formerly abducted women still exhibit significantly higher rates of depression and perceived stress, heightened stress responses, diminished social support and prosociality, but greater grit.
Information, Loss Framing, and Spillovers in Pay-for-Performance Contracts (revision requested; with Sebastian Bauhoff)
Do incentives matter beyond the information conveyed by pay-for-performance contracts? Does loss framing matter? And do incomplete contracts generate spillovers on unincentivized tasks? We conduct a framed field experiment with 1,363 maternity care workers in 691 primary health facilities in Nigeria to answer these questions.
The Perceived Marital Returns to Education and the Demand for Girls’ Schooling (with Rossella Calvi and Hira Farooqi)
We study how marriage market considerations influence parental investments in daughters' education in Pakistan. Using a hypothetical choice methodology, we estimate parents' preferences and willingness-to-pay for marital customs and daughters' marital and post-marital outcomes. Our findings highlight considerable heterogeneity between mothers and fathers, even within the same family. On average, fathers prioritize adherence to traditional customs, while mothers emphasize daughters' post-marital agency. Using a model of schooling decisions that incorporates these preferences, perceived costs, and parental beliefs about marital returns to education, we examine educational investments. Counterfactual simulations show that belief-targeting campaigns and policies boosting mothers' decision-power could significantly improve girls' education.
Income and the Demand for Food Among the Poor (revised version coming soon; with Marc Bellemare and Katherina Thomas)
How much do the poor spend on food when their income increases? We estimate a key economic parameter-- the income elasticity of food expenditures--using data from the randomized evaluations of five conditional cash transfer programs: two in Mexico, and one in each of Nicaragua, the Philippines, and Uganda. The transfers provided routine, exogenous increases of 12 to 23 percent of baseline income for at least a year to recipients at or below the global poverty line. Using pooled ordinary least squares and Bayesian hierarchical models, we first show that expenditures on all food categories increase with income. But even among some of the poorest people in the world, all of whom are experiencing high hunger levels, our estimated income elasticity for food is 0.03, i.e., much smaller than many published estimates that either rely on cross-sectional variation or study responses to large income shocks. Next, we run the first credible test of Bennett's Law--the empirical regularity whereby, for poor households, income increases are associated with (i) shifting spending from coarse to fine staples, and (ii) spending more on protein than staples--and find partial support for it. While income increases lead consumers to substitute fine grains for coarse grains and protein for staples, the estimated shifts are again smaller than previous estimates. Quantifying how small, routine income changes affect food demand in low- and middle-income countries can inform the policy discourse on poverty reduction, nutrition, and social protection, as well as the debate on the impact of economic growth on global carbon emission patterns
Research highlights the gains to the quality of policymaking from diversifying the body of policymakers. International financial institutions (IFIs) appear to agree, all issuing diversity, equity, and inclusion statements. But how do these institutions perform when it comes to their own staff— do they lead by example? We put together a unique dataset of 20 years of HR staffing data from seven major IFIs that are collectively responsible for more than a quarter trillion dollars of lending and employed 33,775 individuals in 2022. The picture is quite mixed: on the one hand, the share of women in any management position has almost doubled over the past two decades, from 20 percent in the year 2000 to just under 40 percent in 2023. The share of women in senior management (observed for a subset of 5 IFIs) grew from around 5 percent to around 30 percent in the same period. On the other hand, not one IFI has achieved gender parity across managerial ranks. Women make up almost 70 percent of the administrative support grades, but only about 35 percent of managerial grades. Senior management positions are less diverse again, with the proportion ranging from six percent to about forty percent. When it comes to boards (appointed by shareholders rather than by the institutions themselves) the situation is even worse: fewer than one in five IFI board members are women. In the professional ranks, many IFIs are close to or even beyond parity, but men are still disproportionately likely to make it out of professional ranks into the managerial ones.
Empowering Women Through Education and Influence: An Evaluation of the Indian Mahila Samakhya Program (permanent working paper; with Kathy Baylis and Mary Arends-Kuenning)
This paper shows that participation in a community-level female empowerment program in India significantly increases participants' physical mobility, political participation, and access to employment. We also find significant spillover effects on non-participants relative to women in untreated districts.
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