May 2017: Moussa Bougma is presenting “Fertility Limitation and Child Schooling in Ouagadougou: Selective Fertility or Resource Dilution?” at a conference on The Demographic Dividend and Fertility Trends in Sub-Saharan Africa.

May 2017: Bouba Housseini and David Sahn are co-authors of chapters in “Poverty Reduction in the Course of African Development“

April 2017: Bertil Tungodden is involved with the Girl Power project in Tanzania to combine training in entrepreneurship with health information.

April 2017: Researchers currently and formerly supported under the PopPov Initiative are featured in 36 sessions and 10 poster sessions at PAA. Download the schedule for more details. 

February 2017: Vincent Somville presented at a UN Wider conference on gender equality and development.

January 2017: Idda Mosha successfully defended her PhD-thesis on family planning practices in Tanzania.

January 2017: Gervais Beninguisse’s research on HIV among people with disabilities was published in The Lancet.

January 2017: Mathias Kuepie co-authored a blog for Brookings titled “When social networks become a burden for African traders.”

October 2016: Elina Pradhan gave a presentation titled “Link Between Education and Fertility in Low and Middle Income Countries” at the UN Committee on Population and Development.

October 2016: Eliya Zulu gave a presentation titled “Africa’s Demographic Transition and Demographic Dividend” at the UN Commission on Population and Development.

May 2016: David Stuckler to speak at 22nd International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) World Conference.

March 2016: 43 PopPov researchers are presenting, chairing, or serving as a discussant at PAA. Download the schedule for more details.

August 2016: Eric Gong, Damien de Walque, and William Dow research on the impact of income shocks on risky sexual behavior was published in AIDS and Behavior.

March 2016: Esther Duflo (MIT) will give the keynote lecture at the Royal Economic Society meeting.

February 2016: Alice Mesnard’s research on migration and infectious disease prevalence was published in the Journal of Demographic Economics.

January 2016: Magnus Hatlebakk’s research on labor migration from Nepal and economic resources was published in Oxford Development Studies.

January 2016: Catalina Herrera Almanza, Northeastern University, will be speaking on a panel on “Investing in Young People to Attain a Demographic Dividend” at the International Conference on Family Planning.

January 2016: Jean-François Kobiané, ISSP/University of Ouagadougou, is co-moderating a session at ICFP, “The contraceptive revolutions: Obvious or nuanced?”

January 2016: Ben D’Exelle’s research on Co-Producing Policy Recommendations was published by the Growth Research Programme.

December 2015: Joseph Nkurunziza, Pierre Claver Rutayisire and Ignace Habimana-Kabano of the PopDev project “Breaking the Cycle: Reproductive Health and Poverty Decline in Rwanda” successfully defended their theses.

January 2016: David Canning, Harvard University, and Ian Salas, Gates Institute, will be speaking at the ICFP Preconference Workshop on the Demographic Dividend.

November 2015: Samuel Agyei-Mensah, professor in the Department of Geography and Resource Development, is the first Provost of the College of Humanities, University of Ghana.

October 2015: Judith Westeneng received her doctorate from Radboud University of Nijmegen. She investigated the relationship between empowering Tanzanian women and their reproductive health.

October 2015: Dr. Ian M. Salas won the Take Stock Hero Award, at the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition’s 16th General Membership Meeting in Oslo.

October 2015: Murray Leibbrandt was honored as one of South Africa’s most outstanding scholars, and inaugurated as a member into the Academy of Science South Africa.

September 2015: Hans-Peter Kohler and Jere Behrman are participating in the Post-2015 Consensus.

August 2015: Patrick Ilboudo won the young researcher prize at the 3rd Scientific Days of the NSRF in Burkina Faso.

July 2015: Prof. G.B. Beninguisse received a research grant from NWO/WOTRO for a project on sexual and reproductive health of youth and adults with disabilities in Bujumbura.

July 2015: Damien de Walque is presenting “Incentivizing Safe Sex Among Female Sex-Workers in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania” at IHEA.

July 2015: Elise Huillery is presenting “Financial Incentives Are Counterproductive in Nonprofit Sectors: Evidence From a Health Experiment” at IHEA.

July 2015: Esther Duflo will be a plenary speaker at the International Health Economics Association 11th World Congress in Milan.

July 2015: Dr. J.E. Finlay received a grant from NWO/WOTRO for a project on Empowering young women in Bujumbura to improve their sexual and reproductive health and rights and claim to their rights.

July 2015: Gil Shapira is presenting “Evaluation of the Rwanda Community Performance-Based Financing Program: Supply- and Demand-Side Incentives Targeting Maternal and Child Health Services Coverage” at IHEA.

July 2015: Marcos Vera-Hernandez is presenting “Multiple Tasks and Multiple Rewards: Experimental Evidence on Anemia and Test Score Incentives in Chinese Schools” at IHEA. 

July 2015: Jotham Musinguzi appointed Board Chairman of the Organization of African First Ladies against HIV/AIDS in Africa (OAFLA), Uganda Chapter.

July 2015: Rachel Nugent is presenting “Impact of Helmet Regulation in Vietnam on Health, Equity, and Medical Impoverishment: An Extended Cost-Effectiveness Analysis” at IHEA.

July 2015: Timothy Powell-Jackson is presenting “The Market for Medical Abortion in Madhya Pradesh, India” at IHEA.

June 2015: Murray Leibbrandt‘s op-ed, “Our new lost generation,” was published in the Daily Maverick.

June 2015: David A. Lam is the new director of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.

June 2015: Elizabeth Frankenberg, Professor of Economics at Duke University, is Vice-President Elect of the Population Association of America.

April 2015: An-Magrit Jensen’s paper “Gender Systems and Fertility in Christian and Muslim Villages of Kenya: Twenty Years of Change,” has been accepted for the 2015 PAA meeting.

April 2015: Sarah Baird and Berk Ozler‘s papers, “Relative Effectiveness of Conditional and Unconditional Cash Transfers for Schooling Outcomes in Developing Countries: A Systematic Review” and “Cash or Condition? Evidence From a Randomized Cash Transfer Experiment,” were cited in UNESCO’s report titled Education for All 2000-2015: Achievements and Challenges.

April 2015: Esther Duflo‘s paper, “School Governance, Teacher Incentives, and Pupil-Teacher Ratios: Experimental Evidence From Kenyan Primary Schools,” was cited in UNESCO’s report titled Education for All 2000-2015: Achievements and Challenges.

April 2015: Peter Glick‘s paper, “Policy Impacts on Schooling Gender Gaps in Developing Countries: The Evidence and a Framework for Interpretation,” was cited in UNESCO’s report titled Education for All 2000-2015: Achievements and Challenges.

April 2015: Jan Huisman and Jerome Smits‘ work on education, “Effects of Household and District-Level Factors on Primary School Enrollment in 30 Developing Countries” and “Keeping Children in School: Household and District-Level Determinants of School Dropout in 363 Districts of 30 Developing Countries,” was cited in UNESCO’s report titled Education for All 2000-2015: Achievements and Challenges.

April 2015: Anne Kielland‘s background paper for EFA Global Monitoring Report 2015, “Evolution in Approaches to Improving Access to Education for Children Living in Urban Slums,” was cited in UNESCO’s report titled Education for All 2000-2015: Achievements and Challenges.

April 2015: Jean-Francois Kobiane was a panelist on “Changing age structures and their impact: youth” at 48th Session of the UN Committee on Population and Development.

April 2015: The Population Association of America (PAA) is a nonprofit, scientific, professional organization established to promote the improvement, advancement and progress of the human race through research of problems related to human population. The PAA 2015 Annual Meeting will be held in San Diego, California from April 30 to May 2. The conference will cover topics including population dynamics, sexual and reproductive health, family planning, and economic development. Download a schedule of PopPov researchers presenting, chairing, or serving as discussants at PAA.

March 2015: Nava Ashraf gave the keynote address at the CSAE Conference.

March 2015: Nava Ashraf, Associate Professor in the Negotiations, Organizations, and Markets Unit at Harvard Business School, is the Keynote Speaker at the 2015 CSAE Conference.

February 2015: Researcher Katerini Storeng recently co-authored the article “Politics and practices of global health: Critical ethnographies of health systems” in Global Public Health: An International Journal for Research, Policy and Practice.

January 2015: An-Magritt Jensen’s Fertility and Poverty-project has concluded and the project report, “Fertility and Poverty in Western and Coast Villages of Kenya: Re-Examining the Impacts of Female Autonomy on Fertility, Child Mortality and Poverty,” has been released.

December 2014: Researchers David Bloom, David Canning, and Gunther Fink debate the effect of health improvements on economic growth, looking back to a study first published in 2007, in the Journal of Political Economy.

December 2014: Murray Leibbrandt was elected as a Research Fellow of the University of Cape Town, and honor which recognizes sustained and original contributions through research or creative endeavor.

December 2014: Researcher David Weil authored the chapter “Health and Economic Growth” in the Handbook of Economic Growth.

November 2014: Shamma Alam’s working paper, “Parental Health, Child Labor and Schooling Outcomes” was presented at the 2014 Northeast Universities Development Consortium Conference.

November 2014: Several PopPov researchers had their work presented at the 2014 Northeast Universities Development Consortium Conference, including: Andrew Foster and Sveta Milusheva, “Effects of a Fertility and Health Intervention on Household Income: A Longitudinal Analysis Using Corrective Weights.” Gisella Kagy, University of Colorado, “Increased Labor Market Opportunities for Women and Household Decision-Making Power: Evidence from the Bangladesh Garment Industry.” Kathleen Beegle, World Bank, “The Design of Public Works and the Competing Goals of Investment and Food Security.” Morgan Hardy, Brown University, “Illuminating the Shadow Economy: Using Lights from Space to Estimate a New Measure of Informal Economic Activity.”

November 2014: Several PopPov researchers had their work presented at the Northeast Universities Development Consortium Conference, including Andrew Foster and Sveta Milusheva, Gisella Kagy, Kathleen Beegle, and Morgan Hardy. 

November 2014: “The economic consequences of AIDS mortality in South Africa,” by Cally Ardington, will be published in the Journal of Development Economics.

October 2014: Vimal Ranchhod and Arden Finn’s SALDRU working paper on effects of South Africa’s Employment Tax Incentive on youth employment probabilities.

September 2014: Several PopPov-affiliated researchers will be participating in the Third Global Symposium on Health Systems Research. See a full list on the Symposium program.

August 2014: In “Climbing Down from the Ivory Tower, Nava Ashraf explains why it makes sense for field researchers to co-produce knowledge with the people they study and serve.

August 2014: Vimal Ranchhod, Chief Research Officer at SALDRU, received the NRF Research Career Award Fellowship, which provides funding for five-year research projects. Vimal’s project will explore the underlying mechanisms that cause persistent and high economic inequality in contemporary South Africa.

June 2014: Bouba Housseini co-authored an Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative brief “Africa’s New Stories On Multidimensional Poverty.”

June 2014: J-PAL has posted a series of Maternal and Child Health Conference videos that feature work by PopPov-affiliated researchers.

June 2014: “Refusal Bias in the Estimation of HIV Prevalence” by Wendy Janssens was published in Demography.

April 2014: David Lam will serve as a discussant during the Migration session of the Economic Demography Workshop taking place at PAA 2014 in Boston.

April 2014: David Lam delivered a keynote statement at the 47th session of the UN Commission on Population and Development.

March 2014: Read Deon Filmer’s paper “Randomized Controlled Trials and Regression Discontinuity Estimations: An Empirical Comparison” here.

March 2014: Fafo researcher Tewodros Kebede contributed to several background papers in the Progressive Economy: European JustJobs Index.

March 2014: Jed Friedman co-authored the discussion paper “Health Information, Treatment, and Worker Productivity: Experimental Evidence from Malaria Testing and Treatment among Nigerian Sugarcane Cutters.”

March 2014: Parfait Eloundou-Enyegue (Cornell) and Gervais Beninguisse (IFORD) recently participated in the Conférence Internationale et Symposium National sur le Dividende Démographique en Afrique.

March 2014: Timothy Powell Jackson published “Who benefits from free healthcare? Evidence from a randomized experiment in Ghana” in the Journal of Development Economics.

March 2014: Watch Jan Willem Gunning’s presentation on development in Africa here.

February 2014: David Stuckler co-authored a new paper, Job loss, wealth and depression during the Great Recession in the USA and Europe, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.  

February 2014: Grace Kumchulesi speaks about the media as an effective communication tool for researchers.

January 2014: Cally Ardington will present a paper and chair a session at the IDRC and Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP) hosted international conference “Youth Employment in sub-Saharan Africa” in Dakar, Senegal, from January 28 to 30, 2014. With the sub-theme, “Putting youth to work through research and practice,” the conference will serve as a lead-in to a special session of the African Union (AU) conference, where labour ministers will adopt a new declaration and plan of action to promote jobs in Africa. These efforts will in turn feed into a summit of the AU Heads of State to mark the 10th anniversary of the Ouagadougou Declaration on Employment and Poverty Alleviation in Africa.

January 2014: Emla Fitzsimons and Bansi Malde‘s forthcoming article “Empirically probing the quantity-quality model” will be published in the Journal of Population Economics. Read their presentation on household responses to child nutrition information in Malawi and watch Bansi Malde’s presentation, “What are electronic data collection methods?”

January 2014: Jan Willem Gunning will deliver his valedictory speech on January 24, 2014 at the VU Amsterdam University, where he has been a professor of development economics for over 20 years. He will retire in early 2014. Visit the Tinbergen Institute website for a profile on Professor Gunning.

January 2014: Kelly Jones, International Food Policy Research Institute, United States has received funding for a project to study whether allocating profits more equitably within households can improve gender equity in cash cropping. 

January 2014: The South African Presidency recently awarded SALDRU the contract for the implementation of the fourth wave of the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS). NIDS is a panel study of approximately 28,000 individuals who are tracked over time in order to aid our understanding of the changing circumstances of South Africans. SALDRU has been the implementation agency for this survey since its inception in 2008.

December 2013: “Tip of the Iceberg: Reporting and Gender-Based Violence in Developing Countries,” co-authored by Amber Peterman, was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Click here for details.

November 2013: The Northeast Universities Development Consortium Conference 2013 included the following researchers from past projects supported by partners in the PopPov research initiative (click to read papers):

• Amber Peterman: “The effect of cash, vouchers and food transfers on intimate partner violence: Evidence from a randomized experiment in Northern Ecuador“
• Tania Barham: “Cognitive Skill Formation and Physical Growth of Boys: Long-term Experimental Evidence on Critical Ages for Early Childhood Interventions“
• Elizabeth Frankenberg: “Child Height After a Natural Disaster“
• Bansi Malde, Alice Mesnard, Marcos Vera-Hernandez: “Household Responses to Information on Child Nutrition: Experimental Evidence from Malawi“
• Damien de Walque: “Cash Transfers and Child Schooling: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation of the Role of Conditionality,” and “Information is Power: Experimental Evidence of the Long Run Impact of Community Based Monitoring“
• Erick Gong: “The Heterogeneous Effects of HIV Testing“
• Joshua Wilde: “Product Mix and Misallocation: Evidence from India’s Product Reservation Policy“

November 2013: Read “Genuine Fakes: The prevalence and implications of fieldworker fraud in a large South African survey,” a new SALDRU working paper co-authored by Vimal Ranchhod.

November 2013: Johanne Sundby co-edited a special issue on “Female Genital Mutilation, Cutting, or Circumcision” in Obstetrics and Gynecology International. See the table of contents here.

November 2013: PopPov wishes to congratulate our partners, the African Economic Research Consortium, on celebrating 25 years of excellence in capacity building and economic research. Read more here.

October 2013: Murray Leibbrandt co-authored “Educational Inheritance and the Distribution of Occupations: Evidence from South Africa,” available in the Review of Income and Wealth.

September 2013: Click here to read “Evaluation of Development Programs: Randomized Controlled Trials or Regressions?” co-authored by Jan Willem Gunning.

August 2013: Congratulations to Murray Leibbrandt for his appointment as a Fellow of UCT. The UCT Council established Fellowships for members of permanent academic staff in recognition of original distinguished academic work such as to merit special recognition.

July 2013: Researcher Joseph Babigumira recently co-authored the article “Health-Related Quality of Life and Social Support Among Women Treated for Abortion Complications in Western Uganda” in Health and Quality of Life Outcomes.

June 2013: Click here to read “Education fever and the East Asian fertility puzzle: A case study of low fertility in South Korea,” co-authored by Hans-Peter Kohler.

June 2013: Click here to read “Staying for Benefits: The Effect of a Health and Family Planning Program on Out-Migration Patterns in Bangladesh” by Tania Barham.

May 2013: A chapter by Anne Khasakhala appears in a new book, Vulnerabilities, Impacts, and Responses to HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa.

April 2013: Berk Ozler joined the University of Otago as an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics.

March 2013: Kathleen Beegle, Ben D’Exelle, Claus Portner, and Joshua Wilde recently participated in the CSAE Conference on Economic Development in Africa.

March 2013: Click here to read “The Emergence of Three Human Development Clubs,” a recently published journal article by Sebastian Vollmer, Hajo Holzmann, Florian Ketterer, Stephan Klasen, and David Canning.

March 2013: Three PopPov researchers will contribute to the third edition of Disease Control Priorities:

• Veronique Filippi: “Levels and causes of maternal morbidity and mortality” in Reproductive, Maternal and Child Mortality and Morbidity and the Unmet Need for Family Planning.
• Damien de Walque: “Conditional cash transfers and other demand-side financing policies for child and adolescent development” in Platforms and Policies to Promote Child and Adolescent Development.
• Jere Behrman: “Broader consequences of early childhood intervention” in The Economics of Child Development.

January 2013: David Lam, Professor in the School of Economics at the University of Michigan, has been appointed as Honorary Professor at University of Cape Town’s School of Economics for five years.

January 2013: The latest publications from David Canning:

• Non-parametric estimation of data dimensionality prior to data compression: The case of the human development index. (2013) Journal of Applied Statistics 40 (9) PP. 1853 – 1863
• Is human development multidimensional? (2013) Journal of International Development 25 (4) PP. 445 – 455
• Axiomatic foundations for cost-effectiveness analysis. (2013) Health Economics (United Kingdom) 22 (12) PP. 1405 – 1416