Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and non-cognitive ability appear early in the life cycle. Little is known about this important question for developing countries. This paper provides new evidence of sharp differences in cognitive development by socioeconomic...

The effect of macroeconomic crises on child health is a topic of great policy importance. This article analyzes the impact of a profound crisis in Peru on infant mortality. It finds an increase of about 2.5 percentage points in the infant mortality rate for children born during the crisis of the...

Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and noncognitive abilities appear early in the life cycle. Little is known about this important question for developing countries. This paper provides new evidence of sharp differences in cognitive development by socioeconomic...

Between 1992 and 1998 the Peruvian Social Fund (foncodes) spent about US dollar 570 million funding micro projects throughout the country. Many of these projects involved constructing and renovating school facilities. This article uses data from foncodes, the 1993 population census in Peru, and...

The effect of macroeconomic crises on child health is a topic of great policy importance. This article analyzes the impact of a profound crisis in Peru on infant mortality. It finds an increase of about 2.5 percentage points in the infant mortality rate for children born during the crisis of the...

Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and non-cognitive ability appear early in the life cycle. Little is known about this important question for developing countries. This paper provides new evidence of sharp differences in cognitive development by socioeconomic...

Paxson and Schady examine the relationship between early cognitive development, socioeconomic status, child health, and parenting quality in a developing country. They use a sample of over 3,000 predominantly poor pre-school age children from Ecuador and analyze determinants of their scores on...

The authors examine how a government-run cash transfer program targeted to poor mothers in rural Ecuador influenced the health and development of their children. This program is of particular interest because, unlike other transfer programs that have been implemented recently in Latin America,...

The effect of economic crises on child health is a topic of great policy importance. The authors use data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to analyze the impact of the profound 1988-92 economic crisis in Peru on infant mortality and anthropometrics. They show that there was an...

Under some conditions, macroeconomic crises can have a positive effect on the accumulation of human capital because they reduce the opportunity cost of schooling. This has profound implications for the design of appropriate social protection policies. The impact of macroeconomic crises on...