Publication: Migration and Child Growth in Rural Guatemala
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Date
2011
ISSN
03069192
Published
2011
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This paper examines the relationship between migration and child growth in the rural highlands of Guatemala, a region with substantial international migration outflows, significant remittance inflows, and some of the highest rates of child undernutrition in the world. Using cross-sectional survey data, a double-difference approach based on child growth patterns that controls for the selectivity of migration is used to assess the impact of migration to the US on Height-for-Age Z (HAZ) scores and stunting prevalence of children. HAZ scores for children in households with a migrant to the US are conservatively estimated to be 0.5 standard deviations higher and the prevalence of stunting is approximately 6 percentage points lower. Descriptive evidence suggests the possible channels through which migration may operate are improved food security and reduced morbidity.
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Publication Migration, Economic Crisis and Child Growth in Rural Guatemala(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07)Migration has been demonstrated by various studies to be closely linked to improvements in individual- and household-level outcomes. Rather than examining the effects of migration, this paper explores whether an economic shock in United States negatively affected migrant households in rural Guatemala. Treating the Great Recession as a natural experiment affecting migrant and non-migrant households differently, the paper puts the spotlight on the effect on child anthropometry, including longer-term indicators of height-for-age z-scores. Panel data on children and multiple children in households enable double- and triple-difference estimation. In relative terms, migrant households fared far worse than non-migrant households over the period. 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There is also suggestive evidence of a divergence in health outcomes, with increases in weight-for-age and height-for-age found for migrant children, and decreases found for children who remain behind while other household members migrate.Publication International Migration and Nutritional Outcomes in Tajikistan(2011)Tajikistan is the country with the largest share of remittances to GDP in the world. At the same time it suffers from stubbornly high levels of child malnutrition against which only very slow progress has been made. This paper investigates the relationship between international migration and child malnutrition, using data from a recent nationally representative household survey. There are theoretical reasons to expect that migration may be exerting both positive and negative effects on nutrition and food security, so that understanding what the net effect may be is essentially an empirical question. Our results indicate that migration appears to be playing a positive role in enhancing child growth patterns (as measured by height-for-age z-scores) in the country. We explore some of the possible channels through which this effect might be operating and find that one such channel is by increasing households' kilocalorie consumption.Publication Health as a Family Matter : Do Intra-household Education Externalities Matter for Maternal and Child Health?(2008)This paper is concerned with the role of education as a determinant of health care choices. The central premise of the paper is that utilisation of health services is determined not solely by an individual's own education, but rather by a notion of effective education, which incorporates the educational attainment of other household members. The paper sets out a general framework for representing intra-household education externalities, and proposes a number of specific hypotheses concerning the way in which the education of different household members affects health care choices. These hypotheses are tested on data from Mozambique, focusing on maternity services, child immunisations, and child malnutrition. We draw four major conclusions from the analysis. First, while maternal education seems to be the education variable of primary importance for the health service and malnutrition variables under consideration, the education of other household members does have a significant and sometimes large effect. This is true not only for the spouse, but also the education of other individuals residing in the household. Second, the analysis suggests that while the education of the person (non-spouse) in the household with the highest level of education is important, the level of education of additional household members does not, as a rule, affect the use of services or child health outcomes. Third, the data provide no evidence of a gender difference in education externalities. Fourth, we examine the merits of two alternative representations of the education externality, but are unable to conclude unambiguously in favour of one specification over the other.
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