-
Using New Policy Parameter to Study Early Childhood Intervention for Low Birth-weight Infants
-
Erich Battistin examines a relatively understudied early-childhood intervention for low birth-weight infants using new policy parameter
Located in
Research
/
Selected Research
-
Quantiles of the Gain Distribution of an Early Childhood Intervention
-
We offer a new strategy to identify the distribution of treatment effects using data from the Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP), a relatively understudied early-childhood intervention for low birth-weight infants. We introduce a new policy parameter, QCD, which denotes quantiles of the effect distribution conditional on latent neonatal health. The dependence between potential outcomes originates from a new class of factor models where latent health can affect the location and shape of distributions. We first show that QCD depends on quantiles of marginal outcome distributions given latent health. We then achieve identification of these marginal distributions and QCD by proxying latent health with neonatal anthropometrics and accounting for measurement error in these proxies. The effects of enrolling in IHDP are widely distributed across children and depend on neonatal health. Moreover, the large average effects documented in past work for close to normal birth weight children from low-income families are driven by a minority of children in this group.
Located in
MPRC People
/
Erich Battistin, Ph.D.
/
Erich Battistin Publications
-
The Insights and Illusions of Consumption Measurements
-
While household well-being derives from long-term average rates of consumption, welfare comparisons typically rely on shorter-duration survey measurements. We develop a new strategy to identify the distribution of these long-term rates by leveraging a large-scale randomization in Iraq that elicited repeated short-duration measurements from diaries and recall questions. Identification stems from diary-recall differences in reports from the same household, does not require reports to be error-free, and hinges on a research design with broad replicability. Our strategy delivers practical and costeffective suggestions for designing survey modules to yield the closest measurements of consumption well-being. In addition, we find little empirical support for the claim that acquisition diaries yield the most accurate measurement of poverty and inequality and offer new insights to interpret and reconcile diary-recall differences in household surveys.
Located in
MPRC People
/
Erich Battistin, Ph.D.
/
Erich Battistin Publications