The current coronavirus pandemic is an unprecedented public health challenge that has devastating economic impacts for households. Using a sample of 230,540 respondents to online surveys in 17 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, we show that the economic impacts are large and unequal:...

This study examines the impact on human mobility of the national social distancing policies implemented in 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries in March 2020. To do so, it uses georeferenced data from cellular phones and variation between countries with regard to whether these measures were...

Despite the relatively uncontested importance of promoting school attendance in the policy arena, little evidence exists on the causal effect of school absence on long-run socio-economic outcomes. We address this question by combining historical and administrative records for cohorts of Swedish...

This paper examines why a larger share of COVID-19 deaths occurs among young and middle-aged adults in developing countries than in high-income countries. Using novel data at the country, city, and patient levels, we investigate the drivers of this gap in terms of the key components of the...

This paper evaluates the short- and medium-term health impacts of offering families with children under 5 universal access to centres providing childcare, health services, parenting support and parental job assistance. Increased access to these centres during early childhood increases the...

We show that children who are born at or just before the weekend are less likely to be breastfed, owing to poorer breastfeeding support services in hospitals at weekends. We use this variation to estimate the effect of breastfeeding on children’s development in the first five years of life,...

This paper presents the results of a quasi-experimental study using information collected through a survey conducted in peri-urban areas of Metropolitan Lima between October and November 2021. The survey was applied to households residing close to and on both sides of the geographic boundary of...

This paper presents the results of a quasi-experimental study using information collected through a survey conducted in peri-urban areas of Metropolitan Lima between October and November 2021. The survey was applied to households residing close to and on both sides of the geographic boundary of...

Early Childhood Interventions (ECI) offering disadvantaged children preschool and family support services in the US show long-lasting health impacts. Can these benefits hold when these programs are offered to all children in contexts with universal healthcare? We evaluate the short- and...

The present paper outlines measures of disparity in healthcare access and health outcomes, drawing from the standardized metrics introduced in one related study (Bancalari et al., 2023). Beveridge countries seem to be less unequal than Bismarckian countries. Yet, there is no strong pattern in...