the AIDS patient and/or increased demands on the time of the elderly to care for sick AIDS patients. In a similar vein, the recent death of a spouse (not shown) reduces BMI among all elderly and the impact on the non-poor elderly is greater. 22 Becoming the head or the parent of the head of household in the past 6 months is associated with a rather large increase in BMI of about half a point. Since the KHDS did not follow the elderly when they moved, in all of these cases the elderly became the head or parents of the head when a non-resident child left the household or died (in the first instance) or joined their household (in the second). Increases in the age and education of the head are also associated with increased BMI. On the other hand, an increase in the number of children 7-14 living in the household was associated with a decline in BMI, again suggesting a diversion of resources to invest in the young. Finally, an epidemic of infectious disease in the community in the past 6 months is associated with a decline in BMI of the elderly, as we would expect.

The results in columns (2) and (3) show little or no impact of adult deaths on BMI, except for the impact of future deaths on the non-poor elderly. However, this impact could be underestimated if households with an adult death are receiving public and private transfers to mitigate the impact of an adult death. In column (4) we have added to the regression private transfers received in the past 6 months by all household members _except_ the elderly member and assistance from government programs or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to the household, both of which are interacted with a dummy variable equal to one if there was a death since the previous wave. When we control for receipt of transfers, the coefficient on a recent adult death in the past 3 months becomes statistically significant, showing a large decline of-0.7 points among both the poor and non-poor. The elderly in households that received private transfers had significant increases in BMI, and the increase was even greater if the household receiving transfers also had an adult death. The elderly in households receiving NGO and government assistance did not have a detectable change in BMI, though the level of these public transfers was very low compared with private transfers.

A final reason why the impact of adult deaths may be underestimated would be if adult deaths raised the probability of the death of the elderly with low BMI. In that case, the elderly who survive in households with adult deaths will be those who had a better health endowment and higher BMI, resulting in a positive correlation between BMI and adult deaths. This hypothesis seems to be one that we can rule out, however: the elderly in households that experienced a prime-aged adult death were not more likely to die in the course of the longitudinal survey.<sup>23</sup> 22 The coefficient on spouse death is -0.086 (T=.27) and for spouse death interacted with durable goods is - .053 (T=1.62); the coefficients are jointly significant (F(2,595)=9.54) at p<.0001. The first coefficient is the impact of a spouse death on the poor, and the impact on the non-poor is the sum of the two coefficients.

23 Of the 697 people over the age of 50 ever observed, 34 died during the survey, five of them in households with a prime aged adult death. While the occurrence of an adult death during the survey had no relation with the _19_