12 Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save (New York: Random House, 2009), available at http://www.thelifeyoucansave.com.
13 See the WHO fact sheet on malaria, available at http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs094/en/index.html. Note that here, as in many other places in the book, we cite the official international statistics. It is good to keep in mind that the numbers are not always accurate: On many issues, the data these numbers are based on are incomplete or of doubtful quality.
14 C. Lengeler, “Insecticide-Treated Bed Nets and Curtains for Preventing Malaria,” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2 (2004), Art. No. CD000363.
15 William A. Hawley, Penelope A. Phillips-Howard, Feiko O. Ter Kuile, Dianne J. Terlouw, John M. Vulule, Maurice Ombok, Bernard L. Nahlen, John E. Gimnig, Simon K. Kariuki, Margarette S. Kolczak, and Allen W. Hightower, “Community-Wide Effects of Permethrin-Treated Bed Nets on Child Mortality and Malaria Morbidity in Western Kenya,” American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 68 (2003): 121–127.
16 World Malaria report, available at http://www.who.int/malaria/world_malaria_report_2009/factsheet/en/index.html.
17 Pascaline Dupas, “Short-Run Subsidies and Long-Run Adoption of New Health Products: Evidence from a Field Experiment,” draft (2010); Jessica Cohen and Pascaline Dupas, “Free Distribution or Cost-Sharing? Evidence from a Randomized Malaria Prevention Experiment,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 125 (1) (February 2010): 1—45; V. Hoffmann, “Demand, Retention, and Intra-Household Allocation of Free and Purchased Mosquito Nets,” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings (May 2009); Paul Krezanoski, Alison Comfort, and Davidson Hamer, “Effect of Incentives on Insecticide-Treated Bed Net Use in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Cluster Randomized Trial in Madagascar,” Malaria Journal 9 (186) (June 27, 2010).
18 Available at http://www.millenniumvillages.org/.
Chapter 2
1 Food and Agriculture Organization, “The State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2009: Economic Crises, Impact and Lessons Learned,” available at http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/i0876e/i0876e00.htm.
2 World Bank, “Egypt’s Food Subsidies: Benefit Incidence and Leakages,” Report No. 57446 (September 2010).
3 A. Ganesh-Kumar, Ashok Gulati, and Ralph Cummings Jr., “Foodgrains Policy and Management in India: Responding to Today’s Challenges and Opportunities,” Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, and IFPRI, Washington, DC, PP—056 (2007).
4 It was part of a Ph.D. thesis by Dipak Mazumdar at the London School of Economics. In 1986, Partha Dasgupta and Debraj Ray, then both professors at Stanford, gave it an elegant exposition. See Partha Dasgupta and Debraj Ray, “Inequality as a Determinant of Malnutrition and Unemployment: Theory,” Economic Journal 96 (384) (1986): 1011–1034.
5 These and other statistics based on the eighteen-country data set (and more details on the data) are available on the book’s Web site, available at http://www.pooreconomics.com.
6 Shankar Subramanian and Angus Deaton, “The Demand for Food and Calories,” Journal of Political Economy 104 (1) (1996): 133–162.
7 Robert Jensen and Nolan Miller, “Giffen Behavior and Subsistence Consumption,” American Economic Review 98 (4) (2008): 1553–1577.
8 Alfred Marshall, one of the founders of modern economics, discusses this idea in his Principles of Economics (first published by McMillan, London, 1890), using the example that when the price of bread goes up, people “are forced to curtail their consumption of meat and the more expensive farinaceous foods: and, bread being still the cheapest food which they can get and will take, they consume more, and not less of it.” Marshall attributed this observation to one Mr. Giffen, and goods whose consumption goes down when they become cheaper are called “Giffen goods.” However, before the Jensen-Miller experiment, most economists were quite doubtful that the Giffen goods existed in real life. See Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, revised edition, May 1997).
9 Angus Deaton and Jean Dreze, “Food and Nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations,” Economics and Political Weekly 44 (7) (2009): 42–65.
10 “Food for All,” World Food Summit, November 1996, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
11 Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, “The Potato’s Contribution to Population and Urbanization: Evidence from an Historical Experiment,” NBER Working Paper W15157 (2009).
12 This is the case that Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman, two journalists at the Wall Street Journal, make in their book, aptly titled Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty (New York: Public Affairs, 2009).
13 John Strauss, “Does Better Nutrition Raise Farm Productivity?” Journal of Political Economy 94 (1986): 297–320.
14 Robert Fogel, The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100: Europe, America and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
15 Emily Oster, “Witchcraft, Weather and Economic Growth in Renaissance Europe,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 18 (1) (Winter 2004): 215–228.
16 Elaina Rose, “Consumption Smoothing and Excess Female Mortality in Rural India,” Review of Economics and Statistics 81 (1) (1999): 41–49.
17 Edward Miguel, “Poverty and Witch Killing,” Review of Economic Studies 72 (4) (2005): 1153–1172.
18 Amartya Sen, “The Ingredients of Famine Analysis: Availability and Entitlements,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 96 (3) (1981): 433—464.
19 “Intake of Calories and Selected Nutrients for the United States Population, 1999–2000,” Centers for Disease Control, results from the NHANES survey.
20 Measure DHS Statcompiler, available at http://statcompiler.com, also cited in Angus Deaton and Jean Dreze, “Food and Nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations,” Economics and Political Weekly 44 (7) (2009): 42–65.
21 Ibid.
22 Anne Case and Christina Paxson, “Stature and Status: Height, Ability and Labor Market Outcomes,” Journal of Political Economy 166 (3) (2008): 499–532.
23 See the story by Mark Borden on the reaction to the Case-Paxson article, available at http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/02/061002ta_talk_borden.
24 Sarah Baird, Joan Hamory Hicks, Michael Kremer, and Edward Miguel, “Worm at Work: Long-Run Impacts of Child Health Gains,” University of California at Berkeley (2010), unpublished manuscript.
25 Cesar G. Victora, Linda Adair, Caroline Fall, Pedro C. Hallal, Reynaldo Martorell, Linda Richter, and Harshpal Singh Sachdev, “Maternal and Child Undernutrition: Consequences for Adult Health and Human Capital,” Lancet 371 (9609) (2008): 340–357.
26 David Barker, “Maternal Nutrition, Female Nutrition, and Disease in Later Life,” Nutrition 13 (1997): 807.
27 Erica Field, Omar Robles, and Maximo Torero, “Iodine Deficiency and Schooling Attainment in Tanzania,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1 (4) (2009): 140–169.
28 Duncan Thomas, Elizabeth Frankenberg, Jed Friedman, et al., “Causal Effect of Health on Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from a Random Assignment Iron Supplementation Intervention” (2004), mimeo.
29 Michael Kremer and Edward Miguel, “The Illusion of Sustainability,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122 (3) (2007): 1007-1065.
30 George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (New York: Penguin, Modern Classic Edition, 2001), p. 88.
31 Anne Case and Alicia Menendez, “Requiescat in Pace? The Consequences of High Priced Funerals in South Africa,” NBER Working Paper W14998 (2009).
32 “Funeral Feasts of the Swasi Menu,” BBC News, 2002, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2082281.stm.
33 These statistics are from our eighteen-country data set and are available at http://www.pooreconomics.com.
34 Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, p. 81.
35 Available at http://www.harvestplus.org/.
Chapter 3
1 Available at http://www.povertyactionlab.org/policy-lessons/health/child-diarrhea.
2 Nava Ashraf, James Be
rry, and Jesse Shapiro, “Can Higher Prices Stimulate Product Use? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Zambia,” NBER Working Paper W13247 (2007).
3 Available at http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/india_statistics.html.
4 John Gallup and Jeffrey Sachs, “The Economic Burden of Malaria,” American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 64 (2001): 1, 85–96.
5 Available at http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/history/index.htm#eradicationus.
6 Hoyt Bleakley, “Malaria Eradication in the Americas: A Retrospective Analysis of Childhood Exposure,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2 (2) (2010): 1–45.
7 David Cutler, Winnie Fung, Michael Kremer, Monica Singhal, and Tom Vogl, “Early-Life Malaria Exposure and Adult Outcomes: Evidence from Malaria Eradication in India,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2 (2) (April 2010): 72–94.
8 Adrienne Lucas, “Malaria Eradication and Educational Attainment: Evidence from Paraguay and Sri Lanka,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2 (2) (2010): 46–71.
9 WHO and UNICEF, Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water, 2010, available at http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2010/9789241563956_eng_full_text.pdf.
10 David Cutler and Grant Miller, “The Role of Public Health Improvements in Health Advances: The Twentieth-Century United States,” Demography 42 (1) (2005): 1–22; and J. Bryce, C. Boschi-Pinto, K. Shibuya, R. E. Black, and the WHO Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group, “WHO Estimates of the Causes of Death in Children,” Lancet 365 (2005): 1147—1152.
11 Lorna Fewtrell and John M. Colford Jr., “Water, Sanitation and Hygiene: Interventions and Diarrhoea,” HNP Discussion Paper (2004).
12 World Health Organization, “Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Links to Health: Facts and Figures,” 2004.
13 Dale Whittington, W. Michael Hanemann, Claudia Sadoff, and Marc Jeuland, “Sanitation and Water,” Copenhagen 2008 Challenge Paper, p. 21.
14 Available at http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/breastfeeding/en/index.html.
15 R. E. Quick, A. Kimura, A. Thevos, M. Tembo, I. Shamputa, L. Hutwagner, and E. Mintz, “Diarrhea Prevention Through Household-Level Water Disinfection and Safe Storage in Zambia,” American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 66 (5) (2002): 584–589.
16 Ashraf, Berry, and Shapiro, “Can Higher Prices Stimulate Product Use?”
17 Jessica Cohen and Pascaline Dupas, “Free Distribution or Cost-Sharing? Evidence from a Randomized Malaria Prevention Experiment,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 125 (1) (2010): 1—45.
18 Pascaline Dupas, “What Matters (and What Does Not) in Households’ Decision to Invest in Malaria Prevention?” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 99 (2) (2009): 224–230.
19 Obinna Onwujekwe, Kara Hanson, and Julia Fox-Rushby, “Inequalities in Purchase of Mosquito Nets and Willingness to Pay for Insecticide-Treated Nets in Nigeria: Challenges for Malaria Control Interventions,” Malaria Journal 3 (6) (March 16, 2004).
20 Anne Case and Angus Deaton, “Health and Well-Being in Udaipur and South Africa,” chap. 9 in D.Wise, ed., Developments in the Economics of Aging (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, for NBER, 2006).
21 Abhijit Banerjee, Angus Deaton, and Esther Duflo, “Wealth, Health, and Health Services in Rural Rajasthan,” AER Papers and Proceedings 94 (2) (2004): 326–330.
22 Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, “Improving Health Care Delivery in India,” MIT (2009), mimeo.
23 Jishnu Das and Jeffrey Hammer, “Money for Nothing: The Dire Straits of Medical Practice in Delhi, India,” Journal of Development Economics 83 (1) (2007): 1–36.
24 Jishnu Das and Jeffrey Hammer, “Which Doctor? Combining Vignettes and Item Response to Measure Clinical Competence,” Journal of Development Economics 78 (2) (2005): 348–383.
25 Abhijit Banerjee, Angus Deaton, and Esther Duflo, “Wealth, Health, and Health Services in Rural Rajasthan,” AER Papers and Proceedings 94 (2) (2004): 326–330.
26 World Health Organization, WHO Report on Infectious Diseases 2000: Overcoming Antimicrobial Resistance (Geneva:WHO/CDS, 2000), 2.
27 Ambrose Talisuna, Peter Bloland, and Umberto d’Alessandro, “History, Dynamics, and Public Health Importance of Malaria Parasite Resistance,” American Society for Microbiology 17 (1) (2004): 235—254.
28 Nazmul Chaudhury et al., “Missing in Action: Teacher and Health Worker Absence in Developing Countries,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 20 (1) (2006): 91–116.
29 Kenneth L. Leonard and Melkiory C. Masatu, “Variations in the Quality of Care Accessible to Rural Communities in Tanzania,” Health Affairs 26 (3) (2007): 380–392; and Jishnu Das, Jeffrey Hammer, and Kenneth Leonard, “The Quality of Medical Advice in Low-Income Countries,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 22 (2) (2008): 93–114.
30 Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Rachel Glennerster, “Putting a Band-Aid on a Corpse: Incentives for Nurses in the Indian Public Health Care System,” Journal of the European Economic Association 6 (2–3) (2008): 487–500.
31 William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (New York: Penguin Group, 2006).
32 See Michael Specter’s analysis of this and other incidences of “irrational thinking” in his book Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet and Threatens Our Lives (New York: Penguin Press, 2010).
33 Jishnu Das and Saumya Das, “Trust, Learning and Vaccination: A Case Study of a North Indian Village,” Social Science and Medicine 57 (1) (2003): 97–112.
34 Jishnu Das and Carolina Sanchez-Paramo, “Short but Not Sweet—New Evidence on Short Duration Morbidities from India,” Policy Research Working Paper Series 2971, World Bank (2003).
35 Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster, and Dhruva Kothari, “Improving Immunisation Coverage in Rural India: Clustered Randomised Controlled Immunisation Campaigns With and Without Incentives,” British Medical Journal 340 (2010): c2220.
36 Mohammad Ali, Michael Emch, Lorenz von Seidlein, Mohammad Yunus, David A. Sack, Malla Rao, Jan Holmgren, and John D. Clemens, “Herd Immunity Conferred by Killed Oral Cholera Vaccines in Bangladesh: A Reanalysis,” Lancet 366 (2005): 44–49.
37 The psychological research has found its way in economics thanks to researchers such as Dick Thaler from the University of Chicago, George Lowenstein from Carnegie-Mellon, Matthew Rabin from Berkeley, David Laibson from Harvard, and others, whose work we cite here.
38 Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New York: Penguin, 2008).
39 See a comparative cost-effectiveness analysis on the Web site of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, available at http://www.povertyactionlab.org/policy-lessons/health/child-diarrhea.
40 Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Rachel Glennerster, “Is Decentralized Iron Fortification a Feasible Option to Fight Anemia Among the Poorest?” chap. 10 in David Wise, ed., Explorations in the Economics of Aging (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
41 Pascaline Dupas, “Short-Run Subsidies and Long-Run Adoption of New Health Products: Evidence from a Field Experiment,” draft paper (2010).
Chapter 4
1 Esther Duflo, Lutter contre la pauvreté: Volume 1, Le Développement humain (Paris: Le Seuil, 2010). In our most recent survey, in Morocco, we found a lower absence rate.
2 Edward Miguel and Michael Kremer, “Worms: Identifying Impacts on Education and Health in the Presence of Treatment Externalities,” Econometrica 72 (1) (January 2004): 159–217.
3 The Probe Team, Public Report on Basic Education in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).
4 See Higher Education in Developing Countries: Perils and Promises, World Bank, 2000, available at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/278200—1099079877269/547664-1099079956815/peril_promise_en.pdf; State of the World’s Children, Special Edition 2009, UNICEF, available at http://www.unice
f.org/rightsite/sowc/fullreport.php; and Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Annex (Statistical Tables), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2009.
5 Nazmul Chaudhury, Jeffrey Hammer, Michael Kremer, Karthik Muralidharan, and Halsey Rogers, “Missing in Action: Teacher and Health Worker Absence in Developing Countries,” Journal of Economic Perspectives (Winter 2006): 91–116.
6 Pratham Annual Status of Education Report, 2005, Final Edition, available at http://scripts.mit.edu/~varun_ag/readinggroup/images/1/14/ASER.pdf.
7 “Kenya National Learning Assessment Report 2010,” and “Uwezo Uganda: Are Our Children Learning?” both available at http://www.uwezo.net.
8 Tahir Andrabi, Jishnu Das, Asim Khwaja, Tara Vishwanath, and Tristan Zajonc, “Pakistan Learning and Educational Achievement in Punjab Schools (LEAPS): Insights to Inform the Education Policy Debate,” World Bank,Washington, DC, 2009.
9 Andrew Foster and Mark Rosenzweig, “Technical Change and Human Capital Returns and Investments: Evidence from the Green Revolution,” American Economic Review 86 (4) (1996): 931–953.
10 Robert Jensen, “Economic Opportunities and Gender Differences in Human Capital: Experimental Evidence for India,” NBER Working Paper W16021 (2010).
11 Paul Schultz,“School Subsidies for the Poor: Evaluating the Mexican Progresa Poverty Program,” Journal of Development Economics 74 (1) (2004): 199–250.
12 Sarah Baird, Craig McIntosh, and Berk Ozler, “Designing Cost-Effective Cash Transfer Programs to Boost Schooling Among Young Women in Sub-Saharan Africa,” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 5090 (2009).
13 Najy Benhassine, Florencia Devoto, Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, and Victor Pouliquen, “The Impact of Conditional Cash Transfers on Schooling and Learning: Preliminary Evidence from the Tayssir Pilot in Morocco,” MIT, mimeo (2010).
14 Esther Duflo, “Schooling and Labor Market Consequences of School Construction in Indonesia: Evidence from an Unusual Policy Experiment,” American Economic Review 91 (4) (2001): 795—813.
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