The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that malaria, a parasitic disease transmitted by mosquitoes, causes over 300 million episodes of "acute illness" and more than one million deaths annually. Most of the deaths occur in poor countries of the tropics, and especially sub-Saharan Africa....

Does emigration really drain human capital accumulation in origin countries? This paper explores a unique household survey purposely designed and conducted to answer this specific question for the case of Cape Verde - the African country with the largest fraction of tertiary educated population...

The risk of AIDS-related mortality increased dramatically throughout the 1990s. This paper updates previous work by Fortson (2011) to examine the impact of mortality risk on human capital investment during the deadliest period of the pandemic. We combine Demographic Health Survey data from 30...

This paper investigates the consequences of prenatal exposure to hot temperatures on child health in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) using a novel indicator of heat waves (the Heat Wave Magnitude Index daily). Leveraging several geo-referenced waves of the Demographic and Health Surveys merged with...

We examine the extent to which recent declines in child mortality and fertility in Sub- Saharan Africa can be attributed to insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs). Exploiting the rapid increase in ITNs since the mid-2000s, we employ a difference-in-differences estimation strategy to identify the...

In this paper, we identify under which conditions and to what extent armed conflicts harm the long-run educational attainment of children in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. By combining 66 rounds of DHS surveys with geo-coded conflict information, our study contextualizes the findings of a series of...

In this paper we provide first systematic evidence on the gender disparities in the labor market in Swaziland, drawing on the country's first two (2007 and 2010) Labor Force Surveys. We find that even though the global financial crisis had a less severe effect on the labor market outcomes of...

We re-examine the effects of negative weather anomalies during the growing season on the decision to migrate in rural households in five sub-Saharan African countries. To this end we combine a multi-country household panel dataset with high-resolution gridded precipitation data. We find that...

We study the role of proximity to historical ethnic borders in determining individual land ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa. Following an instrumental variable strategy, we document that individuals have a lower likelihood of owning land near historical ethnic borders. In particular, the...

This paper investigates the impact of parenting courses on families' time use with their children in urban areas in Italy. Courses aimed at raising parental awareness of the importance of educational activities were offered in four cities (Naples, Reggio Emilia, Teramo and Palermo) within the...