Person:
de Walque, Damien
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Education,
Macroeconomic and Structural Policies,
Health
Degrees
ORCID
External Links
Departments
Development Research Group
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
September 26, 2023
Biography
Damien de Walque received his Ph.D.in Economics from the University of Chicago in 2003. His research interests include health and education and the interactions between them. His current work is focused on evaluating the impact of financial incentives on health and education outcomes. He is currently evaluating the education and health outcomes of conditional cash transfers linked to school attendance and health center visits in Burkina Faso. He is also working on evaluating the impact of HIV/AIDS interventions and policies in several African countries. He is leading two evaluations of the impact of short-term financial incentives on the prevention of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs): individuals who test negatively for a set of STIs receive regular cash payment in Tanzania, while in Lesotho they receive lottery tickets. On the supply side of health services, he is managing a large portfolio of impact evaluations of results-based financing in the health sector. He has also edited a book on risky behaviors for health (smoking, drugs, alcohol, obesity, risky sex) in the developing world.
Publication Search Results
1 - 8 of 8
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Publication
Race, Immigration, and the U.S. Labor Market : Contrasting the Outcomes of Foreign Born and Native Blacks
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-10)It is generally expected that immigrants do not fare as well as the native-born in the U.S. labor market. The literature also documents that Blacks experience lower labor market outcomes than Whites. This paper innovates by studying the interaction between race and immigration. The study compares the labor market outcomes of four racial groups in the United States (Whites, Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics) interacted with their foreign born status, using the Integrated Public Use Micro Data Series data for the 2000 Census. Among women and for labor market outcomes such as labor force participation, employment, and personal income, the foreign born are doing worse than the native born from the same racial background, with the exception of Blacks. Among men, for labor force participation and employment, foreign-born Blacks are doing better than native Blacks. The paper tests different possible explanations for this "reversal" of the advantage of natives over immigrants among Blacks. It considers citizenship, ability in English, age at and time since arrival in the United States, as well as neighborhood effects, but concludes that none of these channels explains or modifies the observed reversal. -
Publication
Armed Conflict and Schooling : Evidence from the 1994 Rwandan Genocide
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-04)Civil war, and genocide in particular, are among the most destructive of social phenomena, especially for children of school-going age. In Rwanda school enrollment trends suggest that the school system recovered quickly after 1994, but these numbers do not tell the full story. Two cross-sectional household surveys collected before and after the genocide are used to compare children in the same age group who were and were not exposed to the genocide - and their educational outcomes are substantially different. Children exposed to the genocide experienced a drop in educational achievement of almost one-half year of completed schooling, and are 15 percentage points less likely to complete third or fourth grade. Sustained effort is needed to reinforce educational institutions and offer a "second chance" to those youth most affected by the conflict. -
Publication
Potential Applications of Conditional Cash Transfers for Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Infections and HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-07)A growing number of developing countries have introduced conditional cash transfer programs that provide money to poor families with certain contingencies attached - such as requiring school attendance or regular immunization and health check-ups. As the popularity of conditional cash transfer programs has grown, experimentation with potential applications in other areas of health, such as sexual and reproductive health, and HIV prevention, in particular, has also increased. Evaluations of conditional cash transfer programs have focused almost exclusively on uptake of health and educational services, which make relatively low demands of participants compared with more complex interventions, which require the cessation of risky behaviors, such as smoking, obesity, and substance abuse. The literature on contingency management - based on the principle that behavioral change occurs when appropriate behaviors are reinforced and rewarded - provides a richer picture of the complexity of the use of conditionality to encourage healthy behavioral change. This paper examines developing countries' experiences with conditional cash transfer programs and the results of trials in clinical settings on the efficacy of contingency management, and addresses their relevance for designing conditional cash transfer programs to address risky sexual behavior and promote the prevention of sexually transmitted infections and HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa. -
Publication
The Determinants of HIV Infection and Related Sexual Behaviors : Evidence from Lesotho
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-12)This paper analyzes the socioeconomic determinants of HIV infection and related sexual behaviors using the 2004 Lesotho Demographic and Health Survey. The authors find that in Lesotho education appears to have a protective effect: it is negatively associated with HIV infection (although not always significantly) and it strongly predicts preventive behaviors. The findings also show that married women who have extra-marital relationships are less likely to use a condom than non-married women. This is an important source of vulnerability that should be addressed in prevention efforts. The paper also analyzes HIV infection at the level of the couple. It shows that in 41 percent of the infected couples, only one of the two partners is HIV infected. Therefore, there are still opportunities for prevention inside the couple. -
Publication
Comparing Condom Use with Different Types of Partners : Evidence from National HIV Surveys in Africa
( 2009-11-01)Based on nationally representative samples from 13 Sub-Saharan African countries, this paper reinforces and expands previous findings that condom use in general is low in this region, men report using condoms more frequently than women, and unmarried individuals report they use condoms more frequently than married individuals with their spouse. Based on descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate analyses, the authors also demonstrate to a degree not previously shown in the current literature that married men from most countries report using condoms with extramarital partners about as frequently as unmarried men. However, married women from most countries included use condoms with extramarital partners less frequently than unmarried women. This result is especially troubling because marriage usually ensures regular sexual intercourse, providing more opportunities to pass HIV from extramarital partner to spouse than an unmarried person who may also have multiple partners but not as regular sexual intercourse. -
Publication
The Demographic and Socio-economic Distribution of Excess Mortality during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda
( 2009-03-01)There is an extensive literature on violent conflicts such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide, but few papers examine the profiles of victims and perpetrators, or more broadly the micro-level dynamics of widespread violence. This paper studies the demographic consequences of the Rwandan genocide and how the excess mortality due to the conflict was distributed in the population. Data collected by the 2000 Demographic and Health Survey indicate that although there were more deaths across the entire population, adult males were the most likely to die. Using the characteristics of the survey respondent as a proxy for the socio-economic status of the family dead, the results also show that individuals with an urban or more educated background were more likely to die. Over and above the human tragedies, a long-term cost of the genocide is the country's loss of productive skills. -
Publication
Demographic and Socioeconomic Patterns of HIV/AIDS Prevalence in Africa
( 2009-10-01)Understanding the demographic and socioeconomic patterns of the prevalence and incidence of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa is crucial for developing programs and policies to combat HIV/AIDS. This paper looks critically at the methods and analytical challenges to study the links between socioeconomic and demographic status and HIV/AIDS. Some of the misconceptions about the HIV/AIDS epidemic are discussed and unusual empirical evidence from the existing body of work is presented. Several important messages emerge from the results. First, the study of the link between socioeconomic status and HIV faces a range of challenges related to definitions, samples, and empirical methods. Second, given the large gaps in evidence and the changing nature of the epidemic, there is a need to continue to improve the evidence base on the link between demographic and socioeconomic status and the prevalence and incidence of HIV/AIDS. Finally, it is difficult to generalize results across countries. As the results presented here and in other studies based on Demographic and Health Survey datasets show, few consistent and significant patterns of prevalence by socioeconomic and demographic status are evident. -
Publication
The Association between Remarriage and HIV Infection : Evidence from National HIV Surveys in Africa
( 2009-11-01)The literature shows that divorced, separated, and widowed individuals in Africa are at significantly increased risk for HIV. Using nationally representative data from 13 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, this paper confirms that formerly married individuals are at significantly higher risk for HIV. The study goes further by examining individuals who have remarried. The results show that remarried individuals form a large portion of the population - usually larger than the divorced, separated, or widowed - and that they also have higher than average HIV prevalence. This large number of high-risk remarried individuals is an important source of vulnerability and further infection that needs to be acknowledged and taken into account in prevention strategies.