DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-382368
title: Three essays on environment, health and institutions in developing countries

description: This dissertation focuses on issues of environment, health and institutions in developing countries. The last century has seen great progress being made in improving health across the world. However, new challenges and threats have emerged. Increasing global temperatures pose a significant threat to human health. Increasing economic growth has also caused significant environmental pollution and degradation. This is likely to affect human health in a variety of ways. Developing countries are particularly more susceptible to this threat because of weaker infrastructure and institutions. ❧ In the first chapter, along with my co-author I focus on two questions. Do higher temperatures during pregnancy increase infant mortality? And can public policies be effective in reducing the effects of high temperatures during pregnancy? We use birth records, from the pregnancy history of mothers from the District Level Household Survey (DLHS) of India, and combine these records with daily temperature data. We show that higher temperatures during pregnancy increase infant mortality in rural areas but not in urban areas. Two plausible mechanisms may explain this effect a) higher temperatures could lead to reduced agricultural output and increased food prices. In absence of consumption smoothing this may lead to reduced fetal nutrition. b) higher temperatures could directly impact mothers physiologically or indirectly through increased disease prevalence. An employment guarantee program may help households smooth consumption. A community health worker may help pregnant mothers in dealing with heat related physiological stress. We use the phased introduction of an employment guarantee program (NREGA) and a partial introduction of a community health care worker program (ASHA) to measure the effectiveness of public policies in moderating the effects of high temperatures. NREGA and ASHA are found to be effective in reducing the effects of higher temperatures during pregnancy on infant mortality. Our finding that child health is significantly impacted by heat, combined with the predicted rise in global temperatures, suggest public policy may become increasingly important as adaptation strategies. ❧ In the second chapter, along with co-authors we investigate the relationship between the size of elected local government councils and public service delivery. We use a natural experiment from India, where the number of politicians at the village level is an increasing, discontinuous function of village population. We set up a regression discontinuity design to study the impact of a larger elected council on the targeting of welfare schemes, as well as the allocation of private benefits by politicians to themselves. We find evidence of improved targeting of a large scale public workfare program in a larger council. We also find that increasing the number of council members increases the appropriation of private benefits by the council head. ❧ The third chapter, investigates the impact of early life exposure to smoke from forest fires on later life health. There is an increasing amount of evidence that early life exposure to air pollution causes negative long run negative health impacts. However, most of the evidence is from developed countries. This chapter uses the context of massive forest fires of 1997 in Indonesia to study the impact of exposure to smoke in early life on later life cognition, lung capacity and height. Smoke from the massive fires affected parts of Indonesia. This chapter exploits the spatial variation in the exposure to smoke and the temporal variation by comparing individuals older than five years at the time of fires with individuals in their early life. Combining data from Indonesia Family Life Survey with satellite data on an Aerosol Index, this chapter find that a) exposure to smoke in early life reduces  fluid intelligence (Raven's test) for male but not for females b) there are no effects of the fires on measured lung capacity and height for males and females. The results suggest exposure to air pollution in early life has negative impacts on human capital accumulation.