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

Authors

Jeffrey Hammer, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Dean Spears, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs

Article Type

Research Article

Publication Title

Journal of Health Economics

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.

First Page

135

Last Page

148

DOI

10.1016/j.jhealeco.2016.03.003

Publication Date

7-1-2016

Comments

Open Access; Hybrid Gold Open Access

Recommended Citation

Hammer, Jeffrey and Spears, Dean, "Village sanitation and child health: Effects and external validity in a randomized field experiment in rural India" (2016). Journal Articles. 4515.
https://digitalcommons.isical.ac.in/journal-articles/4515