Working Paper: NBER ID: w22235
Authors: Pascaline Dupas; Edward Miguel
Abstract: Improved health in low-income countries could considerably improve wellbeing and possibly promote economic growth. The last decade has seen a surge in field experiments designed to understand the barriers that households and governments face in investing in health and how these barriers can be overcome, and to assess the impacts of subsequent health gains. This chapter first discusses the methodological pitfalls that field experiments in the health sector are particularly susceptible to, then reviews the evidence that rigorous field experiments have generated so far. While the link from in utero and child health to later outcomes has increasingly been established, few experiments have estimated the impacts of health on contemporaneous productivity among adults, and few experiments have explored the potential for infrastructural programs to impact health outcomes. Many more studies have examined the determinants of individual health behavior, on the side of consumers as well as among providers of health products and services.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: C93; I1; O1
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| improved health (I14) | increased physical capacity (E22) |
| increased physical capacity (E22) | enhanced labor productivity (J24) |
| improved health (I14) | enhanced labor productivity (J24) |
| deworming treatment (Y60) | reduced worm infections (I30) |
| reduced worm infections (I30) | improved school attendance (I21) |
| deworming treatment (Y60) | improved school attendance (I21) |
| clean water access (Q25) | lower rates of diarrhea (I19) |
| clean water access (Q25) | improved overall health outcomes (I14) |