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
January 31, 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 - 4 of 4
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Publication
The Long-Term Legacy of the Khmer Rouge Period in Cambodia
(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-11)The author studies the long-term impact of genocide during the period of the Khmer Rouge (1975-79) in Cambodia and contributes to the literature on the economic analysis of conflict. Using mortality data for siblings from the Cambodia Demographic and Health Survey in 2000, he shows that excess mortality was extremely high and heavily concentrated during 1974-80. Adult males had been the most likely to die, indicating that violent death played a major role. Individuals with an urban or educated background were more likely to die. Infant mortality was also at very high levels during the period, and disability rates from landmines or other weapons were high for males who, given their birth cohort, were exposed to this risk. The very high and selective mortality had a major impact on the population structure of Cambodia. Fertility and marriage rates were very low under the Khmer Rouge but rebounded immediately after the regime's collapse. Because of the shortage of eligible males, the age and education differences between partners tended to decline. The period had a lasting impact on the educational attainment of the population. The education system collapsed during the period, so individuals-especially males-who were of schooling age during this interval had a lower educational attainment than the preceding and subsequent birth cohorts. -
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
Educational and Health Impacts of Two School Feeding Schemes : Evidence from a Randomized Trial in Rural Burkina Faso
( 2009-06-01)This paper uses a prospective randomized trial to assess the impact of two school feeding schemes on health and education outcomes for children from low-income households in northern rural Burkina Faso. The two school feeding programs under consideration are, on the one hand, school meals where students are provided with lunch each school day, and, on the other hand, take-home rations that provide girls with 10 kg of cereal flour each month, conditional on 90 percent attendance rate. After running for one academic year, both programs increased girls enrollment by 5 to 6 percentage points. While there was no observable significant impact on raw scores in mathematics, the time-adjusted scores in mathematics improved slightly for girls. The interventions caused absenteeism to increase in households that were low in child labor supply while absenteeism decreased for households that had a relatively large child labor supply, consistent with the labor constraints. Finally, for younger siblings of beneficiaries, aged between 12 and 60 months, take-home rations have increased weight-for-age by .38 standard deviations and weight-for-height by .33 standard deviations. In contrast, school meals did not have any significant impact on the nutrition of younger children.