The literature suggests that in developing countries illness shocks at the household level can have a negative and severe impact on household income. Few studies have so fare examined the effects of mortality. The major difference between illness and mortality shocks is that a death of a...

Inadequate hygiene during menstruation can have severe consequences, such as adverse health effects, lower educational attainment and higher work absenteeism. Cultural taboos and social norms surrounding menstruation may be responsible for misinformation on menstrual hygiene and may also prevent...

Household poverty is a powerful motive for child labor and working frequently comes at the expense of schooling for children. Accounting for these natural links we investigate whether and when there is an additional role for community norms and how the social evaluation of schooling evolves over...

There is some indirect evidence that child labor is affected by market imperfections. This paper provides a theoretical model to discuss the effect of improvements on the labor market, when households cannot rely on neither the land nor the credit markets. The predictions differ by land...

This paper examines the effect of a program that extended the length of a school day to improve schooling quality in Mexico, on school enrollment, time spent on schooling activities, and child labor of children aged 7 to 14. We take advantage of the staggered implementation of the FTS program...

This paper investigates the impact of a devastating weather shock on child anthropometrics, using data from Mongolia. We employ a diff-in-diff strategy to identify the effect of an extremely harsh winter in 2010, which caused the death of about 20 percent of the national livestock. Results...

Early intervention is considered as the optimal response to developmental disorders in children. However, relatively little is known about the effectiveness of the standard practice of so-called developmental screenings. We evaluate a nationwide program for preschoolers in Austria....

Obesity may not only be linked to undesirable health outcomes but also to limitations in sexual life. The present paper aims to assess whether there is a relationship between weight change and sexual activity in obese individuals. To address the endogeneity of weight loss that is likely to...

The paper estimates the effect of SO2 pollution on infant mortality in Germany, 1985-2003. To avoid simultaneity problems, I exploit the natural experiment created by the mandated desulfurization at power plants, with wind directions dividing counties into treatment and control groups....