Research

Abstract

Dams are a key and costly investment in agricultural productivity. Despite controversies over environmental degradation and community displacement, dams continue to be built with the expectation that they will generate benefits for society. This paper explores an understudied link between irrigation dams and children’s health in India by utilizing two recent rounds of the National Family Health Survey, a global dam database, high-resolution river basin data, and various remote-sensed products. By employing an instrumental variable strategy that leverages river gradients to address endogeneity concerns, I find that irrigation dams increase neonatal mortality in the river basins where they are constructed by approximately 0.25 percentage points (7.4% percent), while no changes are observed in downstream basins. I show that these results can be linked to dam-induced increases in agrichemical exposure, highlighting the need to properly evaluate the unintended consequences of large investments intended to increase agricultural productivity and household resilience to climate shocks.

Abstract

Over the past few decades, Nepal's Community Forest initiative--where the government allocates state forest lands to local village groups--has played a significant role in preserving and expanding forest resources. However, during this same period, forest fires have become more frequent and severe, raising concerns about whether current forest management practices effectively mitigate environmental and household vulnerability to these fires. In this paper, we leverage the staggered rollout of Community Forest User Groups alongside a remote-sensed measure of forest fire intensity to show that Community Forests increase forest fire intensity in Nepal by approximately 50% relative to the treated sample average. This finding is robust across multiple sensitivity checks and placebo tests. Additionally, we show that these fires are concentrated in regions with rapid settlement growth and economic activity, where households have alternative livelihood opportunities outside of Community Forests. Finally, a cost-benefit analysis--using the social cost of carbon--shows that these forest fires could reduce the carbon sequestration benefits of Community Forests by nearly 65%, highlighting the need for better monitoring and training to minimze the unintended costs of Community Forests for Nepal.

Abstract
Seasonal changes in food availability and disease incidence put pressure on children’s health in Sub-Sahara Africa. Using year-round survey data from Senegal, we examine how seasonality in key health inputs (dietary diversity, diarrhea, and fever) helps predict seasonality in children’s health (weight-for-height z-score). We first parameterize seasonal variation in health and health inputs using second-order trigonometric polynomials, then decompose the seasonal curve of children’s health into component parts explained by seasonality in each health input. We find that lagged seasonality in disease incidence predicts seasonality in child health, while seasonality in dietary diversity does not — likely because diets are poor in Senegal even during the most food-plentiful part of the year. We also observe noticeable heterogeneity in the way these health inputs predict children’s health across different wealth levels and regions.

Background: Child wasting is known to exhibit seasonal patterns, but few studies have examined how the seasonality of wasting affects tracking of wasting trends over multiyear periods.

Objectives: We explored the seasonality of wasting in Senegal relative to multiyear changes and examined implications for tracking. We tested whether month-fixed effects reduced bias in estimating longer-term wasting trends given variation in survey timing.

Methods: The average prevalence of child wasting (weight-for-height z-score < −2) and 95% confidence intervals were calculated by month and year from the continuous Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) from 2012–2019. Peak and low wasting season estimates were defined as the 4 highest and the 4 lowest months of average wasting prevalence. Month-adjusted annual wasting estimates were generated using month-fixed effects linear regression, and the effectiveness of this method of bias adjustment was examined in simulated datasets.

Results: Nationally, wasting fluctuated from 2013–2019, with the lowest annual prevalence of 6.0% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 5.1, 7.0%) recorded in 2014 and the highest in 2017 at 9.0% (95% CI: 8.3, 9.8%). Pooled across years, the peak wasting season prevalence was 8.8% (95% CI: 8.3, 9.3%), and low wasting season prevalence was 6.4% (95% CI: 5.7, 7.1%). Month-adjusted wasting estimates did not differ notably from raw wasting prevalence estimates. Simulations demonstrated that adjusting for months reduces bias in wasting when surveys are conducted 1 or 2 mo apart across waves but fails to reliably do so when surveys are conducted in different seasons across waves.

Conclusions: Seasonal fluctuations in the prevalence of wasting can be large enough to bias the interpretation of multiyear trends. Efforts should be made to conduct national surveys at the same time of year. Seasonality adjustment using month-fixed effects works more reliably when the differences in survey periods across waves are minimal.

Description (subject to change)

In India, state election (Vidhan Sabha) results significantly impact constituencies, as state governments hold substantial power over policies and expenditures. These elections occur at the assembly level, a smaller administrative unit than districts. "Low-caste parties," or political parties focused on representing marginalized groups such as Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC), can run for office. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design and assuming close election results are quasi-random, we examine the welfare impacts when low-caste parties win elections, particularly on health outcomes, which have historically been worse for these marginalized households. We also test whether these effects are lasting or depend on subsequent elections.