ESS lecturer, Adnan M. S. Fakir's research work on child health titled "Revisiting the child health-wealth nexus" has recently been published in the journal "Health Economics Review". The study looks into the causal link between a household’s economic standing and child health which is known to suffer from endogeneity. While past studies have exemplified the causal link to be small, albeit statistically significant, this paper aims to estimate the causal effect to investigate whether the effect of income after controlling for the endogeneity remains small in the long run. The study uses an instrument variables two-stage-least-squares estimation on the Young Lives 2009 cross-sectional dataset from Andhra Pradesh, India, to understand the aforementioned relationship.
There is significant positive effect of both short-run household expenditure and long-run household wealth on child stunting, with the latter having a larger impact. While higher average community education improved child health, increased community entertainment expenditure is found to have a negative effect. Thus, while policies catered towards improving household wealth will decrease child stunting in the long run, maternal education and the community play an equally reinforcing role in improving child health and are faster routes to achieving the goal of better child health in the short run. The paper can be accessed at the following link:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13561-016-0120-8?wt_mc=Interna...