Ghana has the lowest under-five mortality rate in West Africa. Understanding why Ghana’s child mortality rate is lower than in neighboring countries may offer useful insights for other developing countries that are trying to improve child health. This paper explores whether Ghana’s lower...

We examine how variation in local economic conditions has shaped the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Using data from over 200,000 individuals across 19 countries, we match biomarker data on individuals' HIV status to information on local rainfall shocks, a large source of variation in income for rural...

Incorrect knowledge of the health production function may lead to inefficient household choices, and thereby to the production of suboptimal levels of health. This paper studies the effects of a randomised intervention in rural Malawi which, over a six-month period, provided mothers of young...

This paper provides evidence on household responses to the relaxation of one barrier constraining adoption of health practices - lack of information - in a resource constrained setting. It examines the effects of a randomized intervention in Malawi which provides mothers with information on...

Malaria still claims a heavy human and economic toll, specifically in sub-Saharan Africa. Even though the causality between malaria and poverty is presumably bi-directional, malaria plays a role in the economic difficulties of the region. This article provides an analysis of the economic...

While recent literature has pointed out that migrants´ remittances have a positive impact on savings with financial institutions, findings with respect to access to and the use of loans have been ambiguous. This paper investigates whether the reception of remittances facilitates taking up loans...

We provide new evidence on the impact of one severe weather shock on child height in Mongolia. Our focus is on the extremely harsh winter - locally referred to as dzud - of 2009/10, which caused more than 23 percent of the national livestock to perish. This resulted in a food insecurity...

Agricultural innovations are seen as a key avenue to improve nutrition and health in smallholder farm households. But details of these agriculture-nutrition-health linkages are not yet well understood. While there is a broad literature on the adoption of agricultural technologies, most studies...

Food systems in developing countries are transforming, involving a rapid expansion of supermarkets. This supermarket revolution may affect dietary patterns and nutrition, but empirical evidence is scarce. The few existing studies have analyzed implications for food consumers and producers...

Schocks, die während der frühen Kindheit erlebt werden, können das Wachstum von Kindern langfristig schädigen. Wir untersuchen die möglichen Auswirkungen extremer Wetterphänomene auf das Wachstum von Kindern am Beispiel der Mongolei, die häufig von extremen Wintern heimgesucht wird. Unser...