Exploiting Externalities to Estimate the Long-Term Effects of Early Childhood Deworming
Published in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2018
Abstract
I investigate whether a school-based deworming intervention in Kenya had long-term effects on young children. I exploit positive externalities from the program to estimate impacts on younger children who were not directly treated. Ten years after the intervention, I find large cognitive effects—comparable to between 0.5 and 0.8 years of schooling—for children who were less than one year old when their communities received school-based mass deworming treatment. I find no effect on child height or stunting. I also estimate effects among children whose older siblings received treatment directly; in this subpopulation, cognition effects are nearly twice as large.
Other versions
Link to published paper in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
Pre-print 2017 manuscript (pdf)
Earlier version appears as World Bank WPS 7052, October 2014, also available from SSRN
Data
Data and analysis files: (hosted at ICPSR)
Media
August 2015 VOX article: Mass deworming: (Still) a best buy for international development
July 2015 GiveWell blog post discussion: New deworming reanalyses and Cochrane review
Featured in World Bank Development Research e-Newsletter November 2014
Policy brief
September 2015 World Bank Evidence to Policy note: KENYA: Do Infants Benefit When Older Siblings are Dewormed? (also available in French)
Other information
JEL codes: I10, O12, O15
Recommended citation: Ozier, Owen. "Exploiting externalities to estimate the long-term effects of early childhood deworming." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 10, no. 3 (2018): 235-62