Readings 11/18 Health, Nutrition and Gender

[jhconning]

• Chattopadhyay, Raghabendra, and Esther Duflo. 2004. “Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in India.” Econometrica 72 (5): 1409–43. [link]

• Deaton, Angus, and Jean Drèze. 2009. “Food and Nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations.” Economic and Political Weekly, 42–65. [link]

• Jayachandran, S., Pande, R., 2017. Why are Indian children so short? The role of birth order and son preference. American Economic Review 107, 2600–2629. [link]

[jhconning]

Pro has provided a useful synthesis and comment on all three papers here: Women Empowerment and nutrition

Please post your questions/comments here before the seminar.

[Emanuel-Agu]

Deaton and Dreze (2009). Food and nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations.

This paper draws conclusions from time series from different sources for the period of early 1980s to early-2000s. To the authors, there is no significant association between incomes and calorie consumption, or between calorie consumption and health status, yet there is evidence of a fall in the consumption of calories from cereals (cheap calories) but not of fat. However, as the authors warn, the data sources yield inconsistent results not only about food intake but also about anthropomorphic measures. That said, empirically, the mentioned links between incomes, consumption of food, and health status can be affected by the use of available data.

But I find a technicality that seems not to be taken into account: that the relationship of income on health status doesn’t appear to be immediate, and even it takes generations to show its trace. To illustrate my point, the (plausibly?) deteriorated health status of the Indian population (by mid-2000) could be related to events that have happened since the 1970s to that date. Among these reasons, per-capita income doesn’t seem to play a role because the variable is assessed by its average level and not by its unequal distribution. However, it should be mentioned that the authors offer an extensive discussion about poverty measures that would clarify the question that I’m raising.

This reading reminded me of the discussion about the increase in average height of the Japanese and S. Koreans population over the past 50 years. The rise in height is attributed to the increase of animal proteins. The following is an article that illustrates this hypothesis, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5811819/

[alexkmc33]

Chattopadhyay, Raghabendra, and Esther Duflo. 2004. “Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in India.” Econometrica 72 (5): 1409–43.

I have trouble understanding section 3.3 Testing the Empirical Predictions. I do not understand "Thus, the frequency of complaints of a specific type among a group of people is an unbiased estimate of the underlying distribution of preferences in this group". This seems to be coming from the fact that the probability of complaining depends only on the cost of complaining for an individual. Thus, the frequency of complaints of a type of public good is an estimate of the probability of complaining which gives you the underlying distribution over different public goods? Moreover, how do we get S_i?

[VictorZhang0413]

Jayachandran, S., Pande, R., 2017. Why are Indian children so short? The role of birth order and son preference. American Economic Review 107, 2600–2629.

In this paper, author consider preference for the eldest child as a key factor to illustrate unfair intrafamily allocation decisions, which leads to India’s height disadvantage increases sharply with birth order, relative to Africa. I wonder if the authors should assume that these African countries also have high-son-preference to some extent in order to make a comparison with India ？

Second, for religious reasons, some African countries and parts of India practice the same religion, others differ. I know it is a extremely complicated system, but it is possible to find any evidence that religion is also a key factor that influence intrafamily allocation decision in those African countries.

[rojas8]

Women As Policy Makers: Evidence from A Randomized Policy Experiment In India (Chattopadhyay and Duflo) This paper mainly discusses the positive aspects of having a reservation policy for women in India. Does anyone know if there are other positive or negative experience of having a reservation policy? Without having a deep knowledge in this topic, I speculate that the effectiveness of such measures depends in part on the characteristics of the society, some have the ability to accept and to adapt to changes faster than others.

Food and Nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations (Deaton and Dreze) This paper has many interesting aspects that can be discussed. One of the conclusions that catches my attention is: “these undernutrition figures are among the highest in the world, making it all the more troubling that so little progress should have been made during a period of rapid economic growth”. The fact that nutrition is not only linked to better food intake but also to improvements in education and health is probably some common reasoning. However, it takes some time. Reading the conclusion, what worries me is how long some time is.