Village sanitation and child health: Effects and external validity in a randomized field experiment in rural India

Jeffrey Hammer and Dean Spears

Journal of Health Economics, 2016, vol. 48, issue C, 135-148

Abstract: Over a billion people worldwide defecate in the open, with important consequences for early-life health and human capital accumulation in developing countries. We report a cluster randomized controlled trial of a village sanitation intervention conducted in rural Maharashtra, India designed to identify an effect of village sanitation on average child height, an outcome of increasing importance to economists. We find an effect of approximately 0.3 height-for-age standard deviations, which is consistent with observations and hypotheses in economic and health literatures. We further exploit details of the planning and implementation of the experiment to study treatment heterogeneity and external validity.

Keywords: Sanitation; Health; Experiment; External validity; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (43)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:48:y:2016:i:c:p:135-148

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2016.03.003

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