Health Information, Treatment, and Worker Productivity: Experimental Evidence from Malaria Testing and Treatment Among Nigerian Sugarcane Cutters
Health Information, Treatment, and Worker Productivity: Experimental Evidence from Malaria Testing and Treatment Among Nigerian Sugarcane Cutters
复制标题
DOI：
10.1596/1813-9450-7120
复制
发表时间：
2014-11
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
A. Dillon;J. Friedman;P. Serneels
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
A. Dillon;J. Friedman;P. Serneels
农业和其他体力需求部门是发展中国家增长的重要来源，但疟疾等流行疾病通过降低体力对生产力、劳动力供应和工人的工作任务选择产生不利影响。这项研究确定了疟疾对工人收入，劳动力供应和日常生产力的影响，随机的时间顺序，在尼日利亚的一个大型甘蔗种植园的计件工人提供疟疾检测和治疗。结果表明，干预措施的治疗效果具有重大而实质性的意图-提供基于工作场所的疟疾检测和治疗计划在提供后的几周内使工人收入增加约10%。本研究进一步探讨了健康信息的效果，通过对比程序的效果，工人的显示健康状况。对于疟疾检测呈阳性的工人来说，疾病的治疗增加了劳动力供应，从而提高了收入。对于检测结果为阴性的工人，特别是那些最有可能对健康诊断感到惊讶的工人，健康信息也会通过提高生产力来增加收入。这种反应的可能机制包括选择到更高的回报任务内的种植园作为一个结果的变化，在感知成本的努力。一个模型的工人劳动力的决定，允许健康的期望部分地确定供应的努力表明，在地方性环境中，质量差的卫生服务，不准确的健康观念可能会导致工人次优的劳动力分配的决定。研究结果强调了医疗的重要性，但也强调了获得有关个人健康状况的更好信息的重要性，因为缺乏这两种信息都可能导致工人在回报率较低的工作中付出较低的努力。
Agricultural and other physically demanding sectors are important sources of growth in developing countries but prevalent diseases such as malaria adversely impact the productivity, labor supply, and choice of job tasks among workers by reducing physical capacity. This study identifies the impact of malaria on worker earnings, labor supply, and daily productivity by randomizing the temporal order at which piece-rate workers at a large sugarcane plantation in Nigeria are offered malaria testing and treatment. The results indicate a significant and substantial intent to treat effect of the intervention -- the offer of a workplace-based malaria testing and treatment program increases worker earnings by approximately 10 percent over the weeks following the offer. The study further investigates the effect of health information by contrasting program effects by workers' revealed health status. For workers who test positive for malaria, the treatment of illness increases labor supply, leading to higher earnings. For workers who test negative, and especially for those workers most likely to be surprised by the healthy diagnosis, the health information also leads to increased earnings via increased productivity. Possible mechanisms for this response include selection into higher return tasks within the plantation as a result of changes in the perceived cost of effort. A model of the worker labor decision that allows health expectations partly to determine the supply of effort suggests that, in endemic settings with poor quality health services, inaccurate health perceptions may lead workers to suboptimal labor allocation decisions. The results underline the importance of medical treatment, but also of access to improved information about one's health status, as the absence of either may lead workers to deliver lower effort in lower return jobs.