Jorge M. Agüero

Motherhood and Female Labor Supply in the Developing World: Evidence from Infertility Shocks.

We introduce a new instrument for family size, infertility, to investigate the causal relationship between children and female labor force participation. Infertility mimics an experiment where nature assigns an upper bound for family size, independent of a womans background. This new instrument allows us to investigate the differential labor supply without restrictions on initial family size. Using the Demographic and Health Surveys from 26 developing countries we show that OLS estimates are biased upward. We find that the presence of children affects neither the likelihood of work nor its intensity, but impacts the type of work a woman pursues.

The KwaZulu-Natal Income Dynamics Study (KIDS) third wave: methods, first findings and an agenda for future research

The panel study known as the KwaZulu-Natal Income Dynamics Study (KIDS) has been extended by a new wave of data collection conducted in 2004. This third wave of the study interviewed 865 households containing core adult members from 760 of the households contacted in 1993. It also conducted interviews in next-generation households that have split off from the parental households and in the current households of children who have been fostered out. The study finds that the proportion of people aged 20–44 dying between the second and third waves was nearly three times the proportion dying between the first two waves. The pattern of income distribution is one of increasing poverty and inequality since 1993, although the partial reversal of these trends in the post-1998 period is hopeful, as are signs of relative prosperity among those who established independent next-generation households. In addition, access to services has improved.

Do the More Educated Know More about Health? Evidence from Schooling and HIV Knowledge in Zimbabwe

We explore a fundamental link between education and health: knowledge about health. Do the educated know more about how certain diseases are spread and how to prevent them? Using age-specific exposure to an education reform in Zimbabwe, we find that women with more schooling engage in HIV-preventing behavior by having fewer sexual partners and know more about how HIV spreads. An extra year of education raises the probability of having comprehensive knowledge of HIV by nearly 10% and decreases by 7 percentage points the probability of having common misconceptions about HIV. We discuss possible channels for how education led to more knowledge about HIV.

The economic impacts of premature adult mortality: panel data evidence from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Measuring the household level economic impacts of AIDS-related deaths is of particular salience in South Africa, a country struggling with a legacy of poverty and economic inequality in the midst of an HIV epidemic. Household panel data that span more than a decade permit us to resolve many of the statistical problems that make it difficult to determine these impacts. After allowing for the impact of demographic adjustments and other coping strategies, we found evidence that these impacts are quite different across different types of households, and that the largest and most persistent effects were in the middle ranges of the South African income distribution, that is, households just above the poverty line. Households below that level seem less severely affected, whereas those above it seem to recover more quickly. All these results need to be treated with caution because their statistical precision is weak.

Causal Estimates of the Intangible Costs of Violence against Women in Latin America and the Caribbean

Violence has a striking gender pattern. Men are more likely to be attacked by a stranger, while women experience violence mostly from their partners. This paper estimates the costs of violence against women in terms of intangible outcomes, such as womens reproductive health, labor supply, and the welfare of their children. The study uses a sample of nearly 83,000 women in seven countries from all income groups and all sub-regions in Latin American and the Caribbean. The sample, consisting of 26. 3 million women between the ages of 15 and 49, strengthens the external validity of the results. The results show that physical violence against women is strongly associated with their marital status because it increases the divorce or separation rate. Violence is negatively linked with womens health. The study shows that domestic violence additionally creates a negative externality by affecting important short-term health outcomes for children whose mothers suffered from violence. To obtain the child health outcomes, the study employs a natural experiment in Peru to establish that these effects appear to be causal. Finally, the paper presents evidence indicating that womens education and age buffer the negative effect of violence against women on their childrens health outcomes.

Long-term Effect of Climate Change on Health: Evidence from Heat Waves in Mexico

This paper uses year-to-year variation in temperature to estimate the long-term effects of climate change on health outcomes in Mexico. Combining temperature data at the district level and three rounds of nationally representative household surveys, an individual’s health as an adult is matched with the history of heat waves from birth to adulthood. A flexible econometric model is used to identify critical health periods with respect to temperature. It is shown that exposure to higher temperatures early in life has negative consequences on adult height. Most importantly, the effects are concentrated at the times where children experience growth spurts: infancy and adolescence. The robustness of these findings is confirmed when using health outcomes derived from accidents, which are uncorrelated with early exposure to high temperatures.

Health shocks and their long-lasting impact on health behaviors: Evidence from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic in Mexico

Abstract Worldwide, the leading causes of death could be avoided with health behaviors that are low-cost but also difficult to adopt. We show that exogenous health shocks could facilitate the adoption of these behaviors and provide long-lasting effects on health outcomes. Specifically, we exploit the spatial and temporal variation of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic in Mexico and show that areas with a higher incidence of H1N1 experienced larger reductions in diarrhea-related cases among young children. These reductions continue even three years after the shock ended. Health improvements and evidence of information seeking via Google searches were consistent with changes in hand washing behaviors. Several robustness checks validate our findings and mechanism.

Stylized Facts about the Quantity and Quality of Parental Time Investments on the Skill Formation of Their Children

This paper uses seven nationally representative time use surveys in Latin America to identify key stylized facts regarding the quantity and quality of parental time investment on the skill formation of their children. Traditional models of household behavior have failed to account for the differential behavior of parents with respect to skill formation of their children vis-a-vis home production. This paper finds that, similarly to higher-income countries, there is a positive education gradient, as more educated parents spend more time on skill formation than their less educated counterparts. This pattern is observed across all countries. The paper further extends this literature by showing that more educated parents also provide better care for their children, thus increasing the socioeconomic gap.

Using Partial Identification Methods to Estimate the Effect of Violence Against Women on Their Children’s Health Outcomes

ABSTRACT A growing literature in economics seeks to estimate the costs of violence against women by examining, for example, its impact on the health outcomes of their children. However, it is difficult to assign a causal interpretation to these nonexperimental studies due to the presence of unobservable characteristics affecting violence and health outcomes simultaneously. The lack of credible instrumental variables applicable in several countries further limits our knowledge. I address this gap by using new partial identification methods to estimate the relative size of the unobservables needed to eliminate the estimated effects in nonexperimental studies. I also expand the external validity of the analysis by using data from five standardized nationally representative household surveys in Latin America. Consistent with previous studies, cross-sectional estimates show large negative associations between violence against women and an array of child health outcomes. However, when accounting for omitted variable bias, at best, two-thirds of the estimates remain robust and they are concentrated on the outcomes with the largest cross-sectional estimated impacts.

Negative Stereotypes and Willingness to Change Them: Testing Theories of Discrimination in South Africa

Employers often decide job assignments or wages after observing productivity signals from workers. Discrimination can occur because employers have stereotypes (priors) against a group of workers, or because they use signals differently depending on the workers group. This paper introduces an estimable Bayesian framework that allows us to recover both the priors and the updating behavior of evaluators who observe noisy signals from candidates. Using data from a quasi-experiment in South Africa I test for the precise form of racial discrimination. I find evidence of discrimination without overtly negative priors. Discrimination occurs because white evaluators use signals to update their priors about white candidates but not when evaluating black candidates. Blacks, on the other hand, use signals to update their priors about all candidates. The paper uses the estimated structural parameters to simulate how evaluators would choose among equally performing candidates as a tool to show the relative importance of stereotypes and updating behavior on discrimination.