عنوان

Essays in Development Economics

شماره

TLpq2273314621

زبان متن نوشتاري يا گفتاري و مانند آن

انگلیسی

عنوان اصلي

Essays in Development Economics

نام عام مواد

[Thesis]

نام نخستين پديدآور

Ravindran, Saravana

نام ساير پديدآوران

Allcott, Hunt

نام ناشر، پخش کننده و غيره

New York University

تاریخ نشرو بخش و غیره

2019

نام خاص و کميت اثر

191

جزئيات پايان نامه و نوع درجه آن

Ph.D.

کسي که مدرک را اعطا کرده

New York University

امتياز متن

2019

متن يادداشت

This dissertation consists of three chapters focused on the impacts of intra-household decision-making on early childhood and adult health in South Asia. The first chapter, "Short and Long-Run Impacts of the World's Largest Early Childhood Program", presents the first long-run evaluation of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) program in India, the largest early childhood development program in the world. To study these effects, I merge historical administrative data from the rollout of the program with a large number of household survey datasets. Children exposed to the program were significantly less likely to be underweight and more likely to be able to read and do math. Adults exposed to the program when young showed significant improvements in various measures of health. They were also significantly more likely to be literate, employed, and earn a higher wage. In general, women showed greater improvements than men. A cost-benefit analysis of the program yields an internal rate of return of 8.8% - 9%. The second chapter, "Choosing Among Children: Parental Investments and Early Childhood Development in India", shows that the overall impacts of early childhood programs depend on both the direct impacts on exposed cohorts, as well as the indirect impacts that arise due to intra-household reallocation of parental investments. I first theoretically illustrate the trade-offs between inequality averse parental preferences and the production technology for human capital that is a function of investments in children over time. I then use variation in program exposure from the ICDS program to empirically show that parents reallocated their investments towards children exposed to an increase in program intensity, as evidenced by negative spillovers on siblings. This crowd-out of investments is particularly severe for girls. Parents also respond intertemporally by front-loading their investments in children exposed to an increase in program intensity. Accounting for the negative spillovers on siblings reduces the internal rate of return of the program by approximately 9%. The third chapter, "Poverty and Migration in the Digital Age: Experimental Evidence on Mobile Banking in Bangladesh" is coauthored with Jean Lee, Jonathan Morduch, Abu Shonchoy, and Hassan Zaman. This essay studies the negative effects on adult health arising from intra-household decision-making between rural households and urban migrants in a mobile banking intervention in Bangladesh. We experimentally introduced mobile banking to rural and urban populations in Bangladesh to investigate inequality-reducing transfers. The sample includes very poor rural households whose family members had migrated to the city; the technology modernizes inefficient, traditional transfer mechanisms. One year later, urban-to-rural remittances increased by 30% relative to a control group. For active mobile money users, rural consumption increased by 7.5% and extreme poverty fell. Rural households borrowed less, saved more, and consumed more in the lean season. Urban migrants, however, bore costs, reporting substantially worse physical and emotional health.

موضوع مستند نشده

Early childhood education

موضوع مستند نشده

Economics

موضوع مستند نشده

Public health

مستند نام اشخاص تاييد نشده

Allcott, Hunt

مستند نام اشخاص تاييد نشده

Ravindran, Saravana

نام الکترونيکي

فرمت انتشار

p

نوع ماده

[Thesis]

کد کاربرگه

276903

سطح دسترسي

a

تكميل شده

Y