Sanitation and Child Health in India

This study contributes to the understanding of key drivers of stunted growth, a factor widely recognized as major impediment to human capital development. Specifically, it examines the effects of sanitation coverage and usage on child height for age in a semi-urban setting in Northern India. The study uses instrumental variables to control for endogeneity of sanitation usage coverage. The study finds that sanitation coverage plays a significant and positive role in height growth during the first years of life

No toilet, no bride: the unlikely link between private toilets and marriage market outcomes in India

In the latest post of our SDGs series (with Africa at LSE and the IGC), Britta Augsburg and Paul Rodríguez Lesmes examine the sanitation crisis in India, with a study on the determinants of toilet acquisition. Toilets represent an unlikely status symbol for households, and new findings suggest that households may see toilets acquisition as a means of improving the marriage prospects of their sons

Group lending or individual lending? Evidence from a randomised field experiment in Mongolia

Although microfinance institutions across the world are moving from group lending towards individual lending, this strategic shift is not substantiated by sufficient empirical evidence on the impact of both types of lending on borrowers. We present such evidence from a randomised field experiment in rural Mongolia. We find a positive impact of access to group loans on food consumption and entrepreneurship. Among households that were offered group loans the likelihood of owning an enterprise increases by 10 per cent more than in control villages. Enterprise profits increase over time as well, particularly for the less-educated. For individual lending on the other hand, we detect no significant increase in consumption or enterprise ownership. These results are in line with theories that stress the disciplining effect of group lending: joint liability may deter borrowers from using loans for non-investment purposes. Our results on informal transfers are consistent with this hypothesis. Borrowers in group-lending villages are less likely to make informal transfers to families and friends while borrowers in individual-lending villages are more likely to do so. We find no significant difference in repayment rates between the two lending programmes, neither of which entailed weekly repayment meetings.Microcredit; group lending; poverty; access to finance; randomised field experiment

Can Micro-Credit Support Public Health Subsidy Programs?

The low take-up of cost-effective and highly subsidised preventive health technologies in low-income countries remains a puzzle. One under-studied reason is that the design of subsidy schemes is such that households remain financially constrained. In this paper we analyse whether, and how, micro-finance supports a large public health subsidy program in the developing world - the Swachh Bharat Mission - in achieving its aim of increasing uptake of individual household latrines. Exploiting a cluster randomised controlled experiment of a sanitation micro-finance program that coincided with the launch of the SBM program, and unique survey data matched to administrative data, we find that the complementarity runs on two levels: First, micro-credit allows households officially ineligible for the subsidy to invest in sanitation by alleviating credit constraints. Second, micro-credit also helps subsidy eligible households to overcome short-term liquidity constraints induced by the remuneration-post-verification subsidy design to invest in sanitation. Subsidy eligible households living in areas experiencing large delays in subsidy disbursement, or high toilet costs, are more likely to take a sanitation loan, but less likely to use the loan to construct a toilet

Labeled loans and human capital investments

Imperfect capital markets and commitment problems impede lumpy human capital investments. Labeled loans have been postulated as a potential solution to both constraints, but little is known about the role of the label in influencing investment choices in practice. We draw on a cluster randomized controlled trial in rural India to test predictions from a theoretical model, providing novel evidence that labeled microcredit is effective in influencing household borrowing and investment decisions and increasing take-up of a lumpy human capital investment, a toilet

Complementarities in the Production of Child Health

We estimate flexible child health production functions to investigate whether better water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) practices make nutrition intake more productive for children aged 6{24 months. Using Filipino cohort data and a control function approach, we show that WASH and nutrition are complements in the formation of child height and weight. The productivities of these inputs vary with child gender: nutritional intake is more productive for boys, while WASH investments are more productive for girls. Nutritional and WASH conditions faced by sample children are similar to those currently encountered by poor children in low-income settings

Mothers’ Social Networks and Socioeconomic Gradients of Isolation

Social connections are fundamental to human wellbeing. This paper examines the social networks of young married women in rural Odisha, India.. This is a group, for whom highly-gendered norms around marriage, mobility, and work are likely to shape opportunities to form and maintain meaningful ties with other women. We track the social networks of 2,170 mothers over four years, and find a high degree of isolation. Wealthier women and women more-advantaged castes have smaller social networks than their less-advantaged peers. These gradients are primarily driven by the fact that more-advantaged women are less likely to know other women within their same socioeconomic group than are less-advantaged women are. There exists strong homophily by socioeconomic status that is symmetric across socioeconomic groups. Mediation analysis shows that SES differences in social isolation are strongly associated to caste, ownership of toilets and distance. Further research should investigate the formation and role of female networks