Cash transfers before pregnancy and infant health.

We estimate the impact of a cash transfer targeting new mothers on their subsequent children's health outcomes at birth. We exploit the unexpected introduction of a generous, universal child benefit in Spain in 2007. Using population-wide, individual-level, high-quality administrative data from birth records and a regression discontinuity approach, we find that women who received the benefit were much less likely to have low-birth-weight children in the future (while their subsequent fertility was unaffected).

When children have children: The effects of child marriages and teenage pregnancies on early childhood mortality in Bangladesh.

This paper examines the adverse effects of adolescent childbearing on early childhood mortality in Bangladesh in mother-fixed-effects regressions using individual mortality outcomes of 300,000 children. Children born to young mothers (child brides in Bangladesh) suffer from higher mortality in the first year of life than their siblings born later. The survival chances of children born to mothers aged 15-49 years are 48-81 % higher in infant period as compared to their siblings born in mother's early adolescence (10-14 years).

Temporal stability of child growth associations in Demographic and Health Surveys in 25 countries.

Background: Socio-economic and demographic determinants of child growth at ages 0-5 years in developing countries are well documented. However, Precision Public Health interventions and population targeting require more finely grained knowledge about the existence and character of temporal changes in child growth associations.

Methods: We evaluated the temporal stability of associations between height-for-age z-score (HAZ) of children aged 0-59 months and child, parental, household, and community and infrastructure factors by following 25 countries over time (1991-2014) in repeated cross-sections of 91 Demographic and Health Surveys using random effect models and Wald tests.

Age-Specific Correlates of Child Growth.

Growth faltering describes a widespread phenomenon that height- and weight-for-age of children in developing countries collapse rapidly in the first two years of life. We study age-specific correlates of child nutrition using Demographic and Health Surveys from 56 developing countries to shed light on the potential drivers of growth faltering. Applying nonparametric techniques and exploiting within-mother variation, we find that maternal and household factors predict best the observed shifts and bends in child nutrition age curves.

What has driven the decline of infant mortality in Kenya in the 2000s?

Substantial declines in early childhood mortality have taken place in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Kenya's infant mortality rate fell by 7.6 percent per year between 2003 and 2008, the fastest rate of decline among the 20 countries in the region for which recent Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data are available.