The effects of early life circumstances on cognitive skill formation are important for later human capital development, labor market outcomes and well-being. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that the first 1,000 days are the critical window for both cognitive skill formation and physical...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the causal effects that upgrading slum dwellings has on the living conditions of the extremely poor. In particular, we study the impact of providing better houses in situ to slum dwellers in El Salvador, Mexico and Uruguay. We experimentally evaluate the...

In-service teacher training aims to improve the supply of public education. A randomized experiment was conducted in Mexico to test whether teacher training could increase teacher efficiency in public secondary schools. After seven and a half months of exposure to a trained teacher, students...

This paper examines how rural households cope with climate change related rainfall shocks by re-allocating children's time between domestic activities and school attendance. Households affected by an unanticipated rainfall shock face an inter-temporal trade-off between current household income...

This paper describes a policy experiment implemented in Costa Rica to increase learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The experiment provided parents of preschool students with text messages to support their children's learning at home. After 15 weeks of intervention, the cognitive skills of...

This study analyzes the effects of exposure to tropical storms and hurricanes during pregnancy on children's anthropometric measurements taken within the first five years of life. It combines destruction indexes at the district level with 13 yearly rounds of household level surveys from Jamaica....

I review the evidence on access to water and sanitation infrastructure and child outcomes In Latin America. I show that there are large differences in access across countries and, within countries, between households living in urban and rural areas. Many papers in the public health literature...

Teenage pregnancy in the Dominican Republic represents a persistent development challenge. This paper uses data from a randomized impact evaluation of the youth training program Juventud y Empleo, which includes soft-skills training, to examine its impact on teenage pregnancy. We find that the...

This study explores sex differences in language and socio-emotional skills. It focuses on children 7 months old to 6 years old in Chile in 2012 and Nicaragua in 2013. A focus on young children allowed for ruling out a set of environmental and identity effects to explain the gap. Females had an...

This paper evaluates the impact of the Bono Trabajador Activo, a training voucher program in Chile, on workers' labor market outcomes. Using detailed administrative datasets of the National Employment Service and the Unemployment Insurance System, we apply difference-in-difference and IV...