fairly precisely estimated when controlling for district ...xed e¤ects (regression 2).<sup>30,31</sup> With a total of approximately 55,000 households residing in the treatment communities, the treatment e¤ect (0.017) corresponds to 546 averted under-...ve deaths in the treatment group in 2005.<sup>32</sup> The dependent variable in regression 3, table 9, is under-...ve mortality rate in the community.<sup>33</sup> Consistent with the ...ndings in columns 1-2, the point estimate suggest a substantial treatment e¤ect. The average under-...ve mortality rate in the control group is 145, close to the o¢ cial ...gure of 133 for 2005 (UNICEF, 2006). In the treatment group, the under-...ve mortality rate is 97 and the di¤erence is signi...cant at the 5-percent level.<sup>34</sup> The program impact on the weight of infants is reported in table 10. Growth charts for boys and girls are depicted in ...gure 4. As in Cortinovis et al’s (1997) study of over 4,000 children from 31 villages in Mbarara (a district in south-western Uganda), we ...nd that Ugandan infants have values of weight far lower than the NCHS/CDC international reference. The gap increases for older infants. The median weight of six-month old boys in the sample is close to the 25th percentile of the NCHS/CDC reference chart. For the 18 months old, the median weight for boys lies close to the 10the percentile of the NCHS/CDC chart.

Figure 5 plots the distribution of weight-for-age (z score).<sup>35</sup> A population similar to the reference population (NCHS) will have a mean z score of zero, with approximately 2.5 percent of the population below a z score of -2 (the threshold for moderately underweight). In the sample of measured infants, 17.4 percent fall below this threshold.

> 30The numbers on child deaths are comparable to other survey based measures on child mortality in Uganda. In a sample of 1178 children under the age of ...ve from north-western Uganda (from both urban and rural villages), Vella et al (1992) ...nd a mortality rate (percent of children who died during the last year) of 3.9 percent. Mortality rates were around 10% during the ...rst year of life, 3.1% in the second year, 4.0% in the third year, and about 0.5% thereafter.

31The treatment e¤ect reported in table 9 is quantitatively important, even as compared to medical ...eld trials where infant mortality is a measured outcome. For example, of the 23 measures (i.e. biological agent or action intended to reduce child mortality) for which Jones et al. (2003) conclude that there is su¢ cient or limited evidence of e¤ect on child mortality, the mean e¤ect was a 37% reduction in infant mortality.

32 We get an almost identical estimate (540 averted deaths) when we weight with distance to the health facility. Since villages closer to the facility were oversampled, the sample of treatment villages is not fully representative of the total population in the treatment communities.

> 33The under-...ve mortality rate is estimated as the number deaths of children under ...ve in the community as a fraction of number of live births in 2005 (i.e. number of infants younger than one year at the end of 2005 plus the number of infants under one year that died in 2005) expressed per 1,000 live births.

> 34To put this into perspective, an under-...ve mortality rate of 97 implies that child mortality in the treatment group is in parity with that of Ghana - a country with a 50 percent higher GDP per capita (PPP US$) in 2001 (UNDP, 2002).

> 35The z-score is a normally distributed measure of growth de...ned as the di¤erence between the weight of an individual and the median value of weight for the reference population (2000 CDC Growth Reference in the U.S.) for the same age, divided by the standard deviation of the reference population. We exclude z scores > j4:5j as implausible. Four observations (out of 1142) with z scores < �4:5 were consequently dropped.

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