In this paper the role of public spending on the education and health sectors is examined with regard to promoting the gross domestic product (GDP) of 12 countries in Asia and the Pacific over the last three decades. In six of those countries, namely Bangladesh, Kiribati, Malaysia, Maldives, the...

We examine the role of early childhood health in human capital accumulation. Using a unique data set from Ghana with comprehensive information on individual, family, community, school quality characteristics and a direct measure of intelligence together with test scores, we examine the long term...

We exploit exogenous variation in the risk of waterborne disease created by implementation of a major water reform in Mexico in 1991 to investigate impacts of infant exposure on indicators of cognitive development and academic achievement in late childhood. We estimate that a one standard...

Education, general health, and reproductive health are key indicators of human development. Investments in these domains can also promote economic growth. This paper argues for the importance of human development related investments based on i) a theoretical economic growth model with poverty...

This paper studies the dynamics of fertility in 180 countries in the period 1950-2015 and investigates the determinants of the onset of fertility transitions. We find evidence of convergence in three groups of countries, and distinguish the transitioning countries from those not transitioning....

We estimate production functions for cognition and health for children aged 1-12 in India, where over 70 million children aged 0-5 are at risk of developmental deficits. The inputs into the production functions include parental background, prior child cognition and health, and child investments....

We study the effect of adolescent motherhood on education and labor outcomes among 20-24 year old women in Chile. We identify causal effects of motherhood with family fixed effects using a large data set covering the 1990-2011 period. Teen motherhood has negative effects on education and labor...

Using two waves (2007, 2014) of Indonesian Family Life Survey data, this paper investigates the effects of parental chronic illness on educational attainment of children in Indonesia. Studies on this nonpecuniary cost of adult morbidity are rare in the literature despite its significance in...

This paper examines the effects of female education on marriage outcomes by exploiting the exogenous variation generated by the Female Secondary School Stipend Program in Bangladesh, which made secondary education free for rural girls. Our findings show that an additional year of female...

This paper extends a two-period Overlapping Generations (OLG) model of endogenous growth in which associations between human capital, social capital, and health outcomes are critically examined for a low income country, India. If individuals with higher level of human capital can build strong...