Village Sanitation and Children's Human Capital : Evidence from a Randomized Experiment by the Maharashtra Government
Open defecation is exceptionally widespread in India, a county with puzzlingly high rates of child stunting. This paper reports a randomized controlled trial of a village-level sanitation program, implemented in one district by the government of Ma...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
2013
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/08/18125015/village-sanitation-childrens-human-capital-evidence-randomized-experiment-maharashtra-government http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16014 |
| Summary: | Open defecation is exceptionally
widespread in India, a county with puzzlingly high rates of
child stunting. This paper reports a randomized controlled
trial of a village-level sanitation program, implemented in
one district by the government of Maharashtra. The program
caused a large but plausible average increase in child
height (95 percent confidence interval [0.04 to 0.61]
standard deviations), which is an important marker of human
capital. The results demonstrate sanitation externalities:
an effect even on children in households that did not adopt
latrines. Unusually, surveyors also collected data in
districts where the government planned but ultimately did
not conduct an experiment, permitting analysis of the
importance of the set eligible for randomization. |
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