Public policies and programmes: How far do children benefit from these?

In Mexico, an estimated 50% of preschool children and 25% of school age children are anemic. Anemia is associated with a number of adverse health and economic consequences. The Mexican government implemented a social assistance program called Liconsa to enhance the nutritional status of low-income families by providing subsidized and fortified whole milk, especially to children under 12 years. While the efficiency and long term effectiveness of the program has been evaluated elsewhere, the study of spillovers from fortified Liconsa milk on outcomes of other household members has not been explored. In 2006, 74.8% beneficiaries of Liconsa were children and adolescents. However, evidence of spillovers to other household members is strong: 18.8% of adults aged 20-29 years, 21.8% of 30-39years and 40-49% of 20-29 years reported drinking liconsa milk the previous week. The main aim of the paper is to assess the potential externalities of this intervention on anemia (and labor market outcomes) for other household members and explore the consequences for the estimation of the effect of the project on the beneficiaries. To examine these assumptions, we analyzed individual level data from Mexico’s Encuesta Nacional de Salud y Nutricion in 2006 and assess the impact on three different groups using a fixed-effect model.

Inadequate comprehensive efforts towards meeting the demands for sexual and reproductive health needs among adolescent and young people, intensifies the menace of loosing away the progress achieved towards the MDGs over last one decade, particularly in the context of developing countries including India. Using data from DLHS-3, this research evaluated the demographic and socioeconomic differentials in access to family life/sex education (FLE) among unmarried young women in India. Additionally, using the adjusted multiple logistic regression models, the association between access to FLE and attitudes towards range of sexual and reproductive health matters among unmarried women were investigated. Only 48% of unmarried women received some form of FLE. Importantly, the likelihood of possessing positive attitudes towards reproductive activities, knowledge and discussion of contraceptive methods, precise awareness about pathways of RTIs/STIs and HIV/AIDS were significantly higher among women who had access to the FLE. Present study underscores protective role of FLE towards improving the sexual and reproductive life experiences of young people. Henceforth, it emphasizes need for implementing a culturally appropriate and comprehensive programme of FLE to address the sexual and reproductive health needs of the younger cohort in India.

This paper evaluates the impact of a prenatal nutritional program on child health at birth in one of the Canadian provinces, Québec. The objective of the OLO ("oeuf-lait-orange") program is to reduce the incidence of prematurity and low birth weight by providing nutritional supplements to pregnant women in situations of poverty. We exploit the historical and geospatial progressive implementation of the program throughout the province between 1985 and 2005 to identify the causal impact of the program on infant health. Our preliminary results suggest a positive effect of the OLO program on birth weight. Since birth weight is associated with a number of adulthood outcomes such as educational attainment, the evaluation of this program contributes to the debates on which policies should be implemented in order to reduce socioeconomic inequalities.

Despite the wide provision of maternity leave, research on the direct impacts of maternity leave legislation on children’s early and long term outcomes has been relatively scarce. While the small but recently growing literature on this mostly studies Canada and Scandinavian countries, this paper is among the first to analyze the effects of maternity leave expansions on early childhood and later outcomes in China.
Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey and the Chinese Censuses, the paper evaluates the effects on children's education and health outcomes of a policy reform in China that increased maternity leave from 56 to 90 days in September 1988 (in addition to the national expansion, provinces offered extra leave to women having a late birth or with one child only). The empirical analysis employs both a difference-in-differences design, which exploits the variation in leave expansions across provinces and different groups of women, and a regression discontinuity design, which compares children born around the cutoff point when the policy took effect. Positive effects of the leave expansion on childhood and adolescent development are expected to be found. The findings offer new insight into the impacts of maternity leave from a country with different maternity leave and child care institutions.