The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation/IIE Dissertation Fellowship program, administered by the Institute of International Education’s Global Learning Programs Division, provides Ph.D. students in either sub-Saharan Africa, the United States, or Canada a maximum of $40,000 to produce sound evidence on the role of population and reproductive health in economic development that could be incorporated into national and international economic planning and decisionmaking.

For the 2013-2015 cohort, seven fellows have been awarded. For more information on the 2013 Fellows, please visit the website.

Dr. Jotham Musinguzi of Uganda was chosen by the Population Award Committee, a body administered by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), in recognition of his contributions to improving public health. Dr. Musinguzi is a strong advocate of reproductive health as a major component of social and economic development. He played a major role in drafting the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994, and was actively involved in negotiations on the anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

He also played a major role in preparing the Maputo Plan of Action, which was adopted by the African Union in 2006 to help achieve the MDGs in Africa, and contributed to the success of the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning.

The 2013 Population Awards will be presented at UN Headquarters in New York in June.

Under the population and poverty (PopPov) initiative, Hewlett partners have awarded research funding to more than 50 principal investigators and 50 Ph.D. candidates. This two-page summary document gives an overview of the initiative and highlights studies supported through PopPov partnerships. Download the two-page brief, The Population and Poverty Research Initiative (1.2 MB).

Data is now available from the "Marriage Transitions in Malawi" (MTM) project. MTM is a panel study of initially never-married women and men, ages 14-26, collected between 2007-2009 in the Salima District in central Malawi. Data were collected to investigate what influences the timing of key life events, such as leaving school, having sex for the first time, and getting married. The study also aimed to identify whether and how socioeconomic conditions, gender, and other social locations affect a person’s risk of acquiring HIV.

For access to the data, send a brief description of how you plan to use the data to Kathleen Beegle, kbeegle@worldbank.org, and Michelle Poulin, mpoulin@stanford.edu. More details on the study design and questionnaires are available at https://sites.google.com/site/mtmalawiproject/.

The African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP) participated in a high-level panel on “Realizing the Demographic Dividend for Africa,” at the 6th Joint Annual Meetings of the Africa Union Commission Conference of Ministers of Economy and Finance and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development. The event was held in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, from March 21-26, 2013. The aim of the conference was to discuss how Africa can ensure that it harnesses the demographic dividend.

Visit AFIDEP's website to download a report and five policy briefs on the demographic dividend.

PopPov researcher Esther Duflo and colleagues published a final report on the ISAS study in Cameroon, Impacts of School-Based HIV Education on Reported Behavior and Knowledge of Adolescent Girls. A description in French is available here. The paper describes the outcome of a randomized field experiment to study how teenage girls in Cameroon respond to different school-based HIV education programs.

The researchers found that HIV education sessions may not be the best way to increase knowledge and change behavior; but there is no “one-size-fits-all” when it comes to HIV prevention information. They also found information spillovers and behavioral spillovers on pregnancy and schooling among friends.

The project, an impact evaluation of a program implemented by the Institut pour la Recherche, le Développement Economique et Social et la Communication (IRESCO), is run by the Jameel-Poverty Action Lab at the Paris School of Economics (J-PAL Europe).  

Radboud University Nijmegen researcher Judith Westeneng presented a poster on “How Economic Empowerment Reduces Women’s Reproductive Health Vulnerability: Evidence From Northern Tanzania,” at the Seventh Annual PopPov Research Conference in Oslo, Norway. Westeneng and colleague Ben D’Exelle found positive relationships between the increase in women’s access to income-generating activities and the lowering of their reproductive health vulnerability.

Click here to view the poster. (Note: This poster is based on a paper which is currently under review.)

The theme of women’s empowerment also emerged from ECONPOP. Magnus Hatlebakk of the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) presented a poster on “Gender of Children, Education, and Occupational Choice in Nepal.” Findings indicated a strong son preference in the country. Meanwhile, fellow CMI researcher Vincent Somville presented a poster on “Girls’ Economic Empowerment: The Best Contraceptive?” Fall 2014 is estimated for the project’s follow-up. Both posters are available here.

Women’s economic empowerment was also a focus of the 2012 Joint RFP-PopDev Call, namely the impact of reproductive health on empowerment, as measured by economic outcomes at the household and individual levels. See the results here on the PopPov website.

Brown University's David Weil gave a lecture at SAIS Hopkins in April. Watch the video, "Understanding Economic Growth."

David Canning and T. Paul Schultz published an article in The Lancet, "The Economic Consequences of Reproductive Health and Family Planning." This series paper is a revised version of a paper prepared for the Working Group Meeting on Population, Family Planning, and Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, Chapel Hill, Dec. 1-3, 2010. The authors thank the participants in that meeting for their comments. Canning and Schultz both received funding support for related research from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Amber Peterman recently published a working paper on "The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index." She will also be speaking about impact evaluation at the GHME 2013 Conference on June 17, 2013.

Nava Ashraf received a Star in Global Health grant for "Negotiating a Better Future: The Impact of Teaching Negotiation Skills on Girls’ Health and Educational Outcomes."

Jean-François Kobiané's article, "Privatization of Education and Labor Force Inequality in Urban Francophone Africa: The Transition from School to Work in Ouagadougou," has been published in the July 2013 issue of World Development.

Watch a video of Prof. Ruerd Ruben from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs discussing public-private-partnerships and how IDH is having a successful impact with this model.