Meta-analysis and public policy: Reconciling the evidence on deworming.

The WHO recommends mass drug administration (MDA) for intestinal worm infections in areas with over 20% infection prevalence. Recent Cochrane meta-analyses endorse treatment of infected individuals but recommend against MDA. We conducted a theory-agnostic random-effects meta-analysis of the effect of multiple-dose MDA and a cost-effectiveness analysis.

Adolescent Social Outcomes Declined During COVID-19: Evidence From Bangladesh, Jordan, And Ethiopia.

Although adolescents have been less susceptible to COVID-19-related morbidity and mortality than older people, the social containment policies put in place to curb the disease constrained their ability to thrive. This study explored changes in adolescent outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among vulnerable adolescents, focusing on education, economic participation, early marriage, self-reported health, and food security. We investigated the role of governmental and nongovernmental cash and food aid in mitigating negative effects.

COVID-19 and the gendered impacts on adolescent wellbeing: Evidence from a cross-sectional study of locally adapted measures in Ethiopia, Jordan, and Palestine.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and associated policy responses have interrupted services, increased financial stress, and driven social isolation, with acute impacts for adolescents. This study explores relationships between gender, COVID-19 vulnerability, social protection, and adolescent wellbeing in three diverse contexts: Ethiopia, Jordan, and Palestine.

Methods: This study presents findings from a quantitative phone survey with adolescents in Ethiopia, Jordan, and Palestine ( = 5752) on household-level vulnerability to COVID-19-related shocks, household-level social protection (cash transfers or food aid), and locally adapted outcome measures designed to capture the gendered impacts of COVID-19 (collected between November 22, 2020 and February 25, 2021).

Improving Menstrual Health Literacy Through Life-Skills Programming in Rural Ethiopia.

Despite its cultural and biological importance, limited knowledge about menstruation and cultural taboos in many contexts mean that menarche often brings fear and stigma. In Ethiopia, the context of this paper, lack of knowledge and the stigma around menstruation create challenges for adolescent girls related to menstrual hygiene management and their reproductive health more broadly. This paper uses a cluster-randomized controlled trial (cRCT), with 97 communities () randomly assigned to treatment or control, to assess the impact of a gender-transformative life-skills intervention [Act With Her-Ethiopia (AWH-E)] on the menstrual health literacy of very young adolescent girls and boys (10-14) in two diverse regions of Ethiopia (South Gondar, Amhara and East Hararghe, Oromia).

The illusion of stable fertility preferences.

Fertility preferences have long played a key role in models of fertility differentials and change. We examine the stability of preferences over time using rich panel data on Kenyan women's fertility desires, expectations, actual fertility, and recall of desires in three waves over a nine-year period, when respondents were in their 20s. We find that although desired fertility is quite unstable, most women perceive their desires to be stable.

Deepening or Diminishing Ethnic Divides? The Impact of Urban Migration in Kenya.

Unlabelled: The impact of urban migration on ethnic politics is the subject of longstanding debate. "First generation" modernization theories predict that urban migration should reduce ethnic identification and increase trust between groups. "Second generation" modernization perspectives argue the opposite: urban migration may amplify ethnic identification and reduce trust.

Twenty-year economic impacts of deworming.

Estimating the impact of child health investments on adult living standards entails multiple methodological challenges, including the lack of experimental variation in health status, an inability to track individuals over time, and accurately measuring living standards and productivity in low-income settings. This study exploits a randomized school health intervention that provided deworming treatment to Kenyan children, and uses longitudinal data to estimate impacts on economic outcomes up to 20 y later. The effective respondent tracking rate was 84%.

Reevaluating Agricultural Productivity Gaps with Longitudinal Microdata.

Recent research has pointed to large gaps in labor productivity between the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors in low-income countries, as well as between workers in rural and urban areas. Most estimates are based on national accounts or repeated cross-sections of microsurvey data, and as a result typically struggle to account for individual selection between sectors. This paper uses long-run individual-level panel data from two low-income countries (Indonesia and Kenya) to explore these gaps.