Evidence on Child Health and Long-run Outcomes in Kenya

描述(由申请人提供)：我们计划建立一个现有的肯尼亚西部学童教育、健康和营养结果数据库(从1998-2002年收集)，并将其再延长六年，以评估儿童健康和营养改善对长期生活结果的影响。这项拟议的研究将审查最近在75所农村小学开展的以学校为基础的卫生项目--肠道蠕虫(蠕虫)免费医疗--这是肯尼亚儿童的一个严重健康问题--的长期影响。1998至2001年间，医疗服务被随机“分阶段”引入部分学校。早些年分阶段参与援助项目的学校被称为“治疗学校”，而后来分阶段实施的学校则被称为“对照学校”。这项拟议的研究将对这些学校的学生进行为期六年的跟踪调查。由此产生的数据集--肯尼亚生活小组调查(KLP)--将包含10年来(1998-2008年)6,800名儿童的独特纵向教育、劳动力市场、健康、营养、人口和认知信息。我们最近的研究表明，与对照学校的学生相比，在该计划的前五年，驱虫在早期治疗学校的学生中导致了显著的健康、营养和教育收益。驱虫导致就学人数和入学人数大幅增加--1998-1999年治疗学校的缺课总天数减少了四分之一--到2003年，治疗学校儿童的教育程度大大提高。这项拟议的研究将使我们能够检查这些教育收获是否会随着时间的推移而持续，以及它们是否会在孩子进入成年后转化为劳动力市场或生育影响。如果儿童健康收益(从驱虫中获得)与成人人力资本形成和贫困之间存在密切联系，拟议中的研究结果可能会证明增加对儿童健康和营养项目的投资是合理的。在欠发达国家，特别是在非洲，超过十年的大规模、跨学科、多用途的纵向(面板)家庭数据集非常罕见，而且该数据集有许多不依赖于驱虫实验的可能的研究用途。例如，KLPS小组的数据集将非常适合于研究父母死亡对幸存孤儿的生活结果的影响。孤儿福利问题在肯尼亚和撒哈拉以南非洲的许多地区尤其重要，那里的艾滋病毒/艾滋病死亡导致孤儿人数急剧增加。我们计划在项目结束前向其他研究人员免费提供完整的KLPS数据集。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We plan to build on an existing database of educational, health, and nutritional outcomes for school children in western Kenya (collected from 1998-2002), and extend it for an additional six years, in order to estimate the impact of improved child health and nutrition on long-run life outcomes. The proposed study will examine the long-run impact of a recent school-based health project - free medical treatment for intestinal helminths (worms), a serious health problem for Kenyan children - that took place in 75 rural primary schools. Medical treatment was randomly "phased in" to a subset of schools between 1998 and 2001. Schools phased into the assistance project in earlier years have served as "treatment schools", and those phased in later as "comparison schools". The proposed study will track pupils in these schools for six more years. The resulting dataset - the Kenyan Life Panel Survey (KLPS) - will contain unique longitudinal educational, labor market, health, nutritional, demographic, and cognitive information for 6,800 children over ten years (1998-2008). Our recent research indicates that deworming led to significant health, nutritional, and educational gains among pupils in the early treatment schools relative to comparison school pupils, in the first five years of the program. Deworming led to dramatic gains in school attendance and enrollment - the total number of school days missed in 1998-1999 fell by one-quarter in treatment schools - and by 2003, educational attainment was significantly higher among treatment school children. The proposed study will allow us to examine whether these educational gains persist through time, and if they translate into labor market or fertility impacts as the children enter adulthood. If there are strong links between child health gains (from deworming) and adult human capital formation and poverty, the results of the proposed study may justify increased investment in child health and nutrition programs. Large-scale, interdisciplinary, multi-use longitudinal (panel) household datasets running over ten years are very rare in less developed countries, and particularly in Africa, and there are many possible research uses for the dataset that do not rely on the deworming experiment. For instance, the KLPS panel dataset will be well-suited to examine the effect of a parent death on the life outcomes of surviving orphan children. The issue of orphan welfare is especially relevant in Kenya - and many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa - where HIV/AIDS deaths have led to a sharp increase in orphans. We plan to make the complete KLPS dataset publicly available at no cost to other investigators by the end of the project.