Working papers
Working papers
Religious legal reforms shape child welfare in pluralistic societies. This paper examines Nigeria's 2000 Sharia Penal Code reform, adopted by 12 northern states with varying enforcement intensity. Using Demographic and Health Survey data from 1990 to 2018 and difference-in-differences estimation, I find the reform reduced child anthropometric measures by 0.23 to 0.29 standard deviations. Effects concentrated among non-Muslim minorities, who experienced declines of 0.76 standard deviations in height-for-age and 0.44 standard deviations in weight-for-age, approximately three times larger than Muslims. Muslims showed mixed effects: no significant changes in height-for-age but declines in weight-for-height. Enforcement intensity shaped outcomes for non-Muslims but not Muslims. A theoretical model and empirical analysis reveal two mechanisms. Among Muslims, stronger enforcement encouraged health investment but increased son-biased fertility. These opposing effects offset one another. Among non-Muslims, weak enforcement enabled discriminatory service denial while strong enforcement protected access. These findings demonstrate how religious legal reforms create unintended spillovers that harm minority populations, with enforcement strength determining the scope for discrimination.
Feeding Fairly: Gendered Nutrition Interventions and Intra-Household Norms in Uganda (With Teresa Molina-Millàn, Emily Ouma, and Nils Teufil)
Malnutrition is prevalent in Uganda, and approximately 28% of the children experience stunted growth. This is in part due to the limited knowledge of proper nutrition and social norms that restrict the consumption of certain foods among vulnerable groups. This paper evaluates a randomized intervention that combined gender-differentiated nutrition information sessions with a social norm component to improve dietary outcomes for women and children. We find that in the short run involving both spouses increases nutritional knowledge for both men and women, with larger gains among men. Adding the social norms module significantly reduces adherence to conservative food norms, particularly among men. It also increases reported pro-child food distribution. The combined intervention yields substantial improvements in dietary diversity and ASF consumption among women and children, compared to both the wife-only and couple-based nutrition information sessions. These effects are not driven by increased food expenditures, but by changes in intra-household allocation and reduced spending on meals consumed outside the home.
Social Norms Under Observation: Gendered Bias in Household Survey Responses
I evaluate enumerator effects in survey responses and intervention outcomes using randomized assignment of enumerators to 2,376 respondents in a nutrition intervention study. I identify three key results. First, enumerator effects vary systematically with question type, with minimal impact on objective measures but substantial influence on sensitive topics like household activities and social norms. Second, gender matching produces asymmetric effects: male-male pairs report more conservative attitudes and higher dietary taboo prevalence, while female-female pairs express more progressive views and greater household participation. Third, enumerator-respondent gender dynamics moderate intervention effectiveness across outcome domains, with knowledge acquisition showing the strongest sensitivity to gender matching while social norms remain robust and food consumption displays baseline differences but preserved treatment effectiveness. A priming experiment reveals these patterns reflect a female interviewer effect, where female enumerators elicit more progressive responses regardless of respondent gender. These findings challenge conventional gender matching protocols in household surveys with important implications for research methodology and policy evaluation in development contexts.
Works in progress
On the Reversal of the Gender Gap in Education in Sub-Saharan Africa. (With Damien de Walque and Carolina Lopez).
Sibling Gender and Child Labor: Evidence from Patrilineal and Matrilineal Societies.
Social Constraints to Food Consumption: A Qualitative Study in Uganda. (With Esther Achandi and Emily Ouma).