Download or read book Three Essays on Economic Determinants of Child Malnutrition written by Alessandra Marini and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Poverty Nutrition and Development written by Sylvia Annette Blom and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change and urbanization pose new challenges and opportunities to the effort to alleviate poverty in developing countries. This dissertation is comprised of three chapters that examine questions relating to the microeconomics of poverty, nutrition, and development in light of these ongoing trends. The first chapter, joint with Ariel Ortiz-Bobea and John Hoddinott, is motivated by the recent literature showing that extreme heat shocks can lead to poor economic and health outcomes. We construct hourly bins of temperature exposure to estimate the effects of extreme heat on early child nutrition, a health outcome correlated with educational attainment and income in adulthood. Linking 15 rounds of repeated cross-section data from five West African countries to geo-coded weather data, we find that extreme heat increases the prevalence of both chronic and acute malnutrition. We find that a 2 degree Celsuis rise in temperature will increase the prevalence of stunting by 3.9 percentage points, reversing more than half of the progress made on improving nutrition during our study period. In the second chapter, I re-examine the historical urban nutrition advantage in Bangladesh. Despite rapid and widespread rural-to-urban migration, I find that higher levels of wealth and education in urban areas continue to drive the urban nutrition advantage in Bangladesh. Among the youngest children, however, the gap is not significantly different from zero, consistent with the strong breastfeeding practices observed among rural mothers. Yet, by 24 months, rural children from low-income households are worse off compared with the average child, suggesting a need for more research on the determinants of other (non-breastfeeding) intermediate outcomes and nutrition-related behaviors in rural households. The third chapter examines the effects of financial stress on decision-making among the urban poor, a large and growing population in the developing world. I conduct a lab-in-the-field experiment with market vendors in Addis Ababa where I use mystery shoppers to exogenously increase vendors' earnings. I then measure deviations from utility-maximizing choices and uptake of a budget-expanding opportunity. I find that there is no impact of a single-day revenue increase on decision-making among the poorest vendors. However, I find descriptive evidence that economically beneficial decisions are more common among those with lower than expected monthly wages, suggesting that in the medium term, the income channel dominates the cognitive channel.

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Maternal and Early Childhood Undernutrition written by Katherine Pittenger Adams and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first 1,000 days in a child's life, beginning at conception and extending through his/her second birthday, have been identified as the critical window for preventing undernutrition. This dissertation brings an economic perspective to a randomized controlled nutrition trial in Ghana testing the efficacy of a lipid-based nutrient supplement formulated for maternal consumption during pregnancy and lactation (LNS-P&L) for the prevention of maternal and early childhood undernutrition. In this collection of essays, I explore (1) household valuation of LNS-P&L, including potential barriers to adoption and policy actions that may help stimulate demand outside the context of the randomized trials, and (2) intrahousehold spillover effects generated by maternal consumption of LNS-P&L.In the first essay, I use three rounds of contingent valuation survey data from a sample of households participating in the randomized controlled trial to estimate willingness-to-pay (WTP) for LNS-P&L and, as a comparator, soybean flour, which is a locally-available product commonly sold to women at prenatal clinics. I also evaluate how experience using LNS-P&L influences WTP for both products. I find WTP for LNS-P&L is, in general, positive, and respondents are willing to pay a price premium for LNS-P&L over soybean flour at each round. However, neither personal experience using LNS-P&L nor contact with others consuming LNS-P&L has a systematic effect on WTP. In the second essay, I use experimental auction bids on LNS-P&L from a sample of women who did not participate in the randomized trial to characterize WTP for LNS-P&L and to explore the effect of providing information on the potential long-term benefits of preventing maternal and early childhood undernutrition on WTP. Although the literature has identified a lack of information as a potential barrier to adoption of preventative health and nutritional products, I find that while the information treatment increases average WTP and shifts the distribution of WTP slightly to the right, these effects are not statistically significant. In the third essay, I explore intrahousehold spillover effects of maternal consumption of LNS-P&L. Using anthropometric data on the youngest, non-targeted sibling under five years of age in the household, I find an increase in siblings' changes in height-for-age z-scores over the course of maternal supplementation with LNS-P&L. I then use supplementary data to explore mechanisms that may be generating the sibling spillover effects and find maternal consumption of LNS-P&L is associated with an increase in the percentage of total household expenditures allocated to food, resulting in higher expenditures on some nutrient-rich foods such as fish, milk, fruit, and vegetables. The results presented in these essays suggest that the effectiveness of LNS-P&L outside the context of the randomized controlled trials may hinge on innovative policy action to encourage demand for LNS-P&L and to reduce barriers to its adoption. Nonetheless, households indicate a willingness to invest in LNS-P&L, a product that may improve the likelihood a baby is born healthy and thrives through his/her first two years of life. Moreover, consuming LNS-P&L may have beneficial spillover effects on the nutritional status of other young children in the household.

Download or read book Essays in Development and Nutrition Economics written by Seollee Park and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation contains three essays in development and nutrition. These essays focus on a prevalent health problem in the developing world, undernutrition, which is one of the leading causes of child mortality and leads to poorer health, education, and labor outcomes in adulthood (Ahmed, et al., 2012; Avula, et al., 2013; Black, et al., 2008; Hoddinott, et al., 2013; World Bank, 2017). The first chapter provides an introduction to this dissertation. The second chapter, coauthored with Derek Headey and John Hoddinott, identifies the long-term drivers of nutritional change over the past two decades in 47 developing countries, applying consistent methods on a common database, from which we extracted a common set of nutrition-sensitive factors for all countries. We find that, while the magnitudes vary across countries, wealth accumulation and gains in parental education are the two largest drivers of reductions in undernutrition in the developing world. The variations in the child nutritional returns to parental education can be explained by the availability of public, rather than private, resources-i.e., child nutritional returns to parental education are greater when public resources are more abundant. The third chapter is joint work with Yaeeun Han and Hyuncheol Bryant Kim. This chapter is motivated by the strikingly low dietary diversity among young children in Ethiopia, which increases the risk of chronic undernutrition. This monotonous diet is a consequence of many factors, including poor maternal knowledge of good diets, limited resources, or both. We implemented a clustered randomized control trial that randomly provides nutrition education for mothers (behavior change communication, BCC), food vouchers, or both. We find a reduction in chronic child undernutrition only when both BCC and vouchers are provided, even though BCC alone improves mothers' nutritional knowledge and child-feeding behaviors to some extent. Food vouchers alone did not have any effect on mothers' nutritional knowledge or child-feeding behaviors. Our results suggest that, when both knowledge and income are intertwined challenges for improved child-feeding practices, addressing both constraints simultaneously may augment the positive impacts. Using a lab-in-the-field and field experiment settings in the context of a floriculture plant in Ethiopia, the fourth chapter investigates the effects of nutrition on labor productivity and economic decision-making by randomly providing nutritious filling breakfasts to workers. As intermediate outcomes, I also examine to what extent hunger alleviation affects individual's social preference, attention, and physical ability. I find that farm breakfasts did not improve productivity or economic decision-making. On behavioral outcomes, farm breakfasts decreased stress and increased self-interest and trustworthiness. These effects exhibited a pattern of hedonic adaptation in which effects are pronounced in the first several weeks but dissipate over time. By examining behavioral outcomes related to productivity and economic decision-making, this study shifts the focus from how nutrition affects the physical aspects to the psychological and the behavioral aspects.

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economic Determinants of Household Meal Production and Eating Behavior written by Richard A. Dunn and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Journal of Economic Literature written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Communities in Action written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Download or read book Dissertation Abstracts International written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Health in Developing Countries written by Eiji Mangyo and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays in Public Economics written by Yoonyoung Cho and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Slavic Review written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 1080 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Health written by Yleana Pamela Ortiz Arevalo and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Nutrition Economics written by Suresh Babu and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2016-11-02 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nutrition Economics: Principles and Policy Applications establishes the core criteria for consideration as new policies and regulations are developed, including application-based principles that ensure practical, effective implementation of policy. From the economic contribution of nutrition on quality of life, to the costs of malnutrition on society from both an individual and governmental level, this book guides the reader through the factors that can determine the success or failure of a nutrition policy. Written by an expert in policy development, and incorporating an encompassing view of the factors that impact nutrition from an economic standpoint (and their resulting effects), this book is unique in its focus on guiding other professionals and those in advanced stages of study to important considerations for correct policy modeling and evaluation. As creating policy without a comprehensive understanding of the relevant contributing factors that lead to failure is not an option, this book provides a timely reference. Connects the direct and indirect impacts of economic policy on nutritional status Provides practical insights into the analysis of nutrition policies and programs that will produce meaningful results Presents a hands-on approach on how to apply economic theory to the design of nutritional policies and programs

Download or read book Econometric Analysis in Poverty Research written by Johannes Gräb and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2009 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 3.5 Empirical Findings 853.5.1 Data 85; 3.5.2 Descriptive Statistics 90; 3.5.3 Method 95; 3.5.4 Regression Results 98; 3.6 Conclusion 111.

Download or read book Poverty and Famines written by Amartya Sen and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 1983-01-20 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main focus of this book is on the causation of starvation in general and of famines in particular. The author develops the alternative method of analysis—the 'entitlement approach'—concentrating on ownership and exchange, not on food supply. The book also provides a general analysis of the characterization and measurement of poverty. Various approaches used in economics, sociology, and political theory are critically examined. The predominance of distributional issues, including distribution between different occupation groups, links up the problem of conceptualizing poverty with that of analyzing starvation.

Download or read book Struggle for Health written by Stuart R. Gillespie and published by Concept Publishing Company. This book was released on 1993 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Economics and Human Biology written by Dr. John Komlos and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-25 with total page 849 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Economics and Human Biology provides an extensive and insightful overview of how economic conditions affect human well-being and how human health influences economic outcomes. Among the topics explored are how variations in height, whether over time, among different socio-economic groups, and in different locations, are important indicators of changes in economic growth and economic development, levels of economic inequality, and economic opportunities for individuals. The book covers a broad geographic range: Africa, Latin and North America, Asia, and Europe. Its temporal scope ranges from the late Iron Age to the present. Taking advantage of recent improvements in data and economic methods, the book also explores how humans' biological conditions influence and are influenced by their economic circumstances, including poverty. Among the issues addressed are how height, body mass index (BMI), and obesity can affect and are affected by productivity, wages, and wealth. How family environment affects health and well-being is examined, as is the importance of both pre-birth and early childhood conditions for subsequent economic outcomes. Reflecting this dynamic and expanding area of research, the volume shows that well-being is a salient aspect of economics, and the new toolkit of evidence from biological living standards enhances understanding of industrialization, commercialization, income distribution, the organization of health care, social status, and the redistributive state affect such human attributes as physical stature, weight, and the obesity epidemic in historical and contemporary populations.