r.i.c.e.

I just added three new papers to our research.

Two are about sanitation in India, in preparation for NCAER's upcoming India Policy Forum, where I will talk about the Total Sanitation Campaign. One, "Sanitation and open defecation explain international variation in children’s height: Evidence from 140 nationally representative household surveys" shows that open defecation is an important part of why Indian children are so short, on average, relative to other countries. Another, "Effects of Early-Life Exposure to Rural Sanitation on Childhood Cognitive Skills: Evidence from India’s Total Sanitation Campaign," which is joint with Sneha Lamba, documents and effect of the TSC on children's cognitve achievement.

The third one, "Poverty and Probability: Aspiration and Aversion to Compound Lotteries in El Salvador and India," is of a different sort. It shows that the many things required for aspiration to succeed for poor people can be discouraging, and was recently published in the journal Experimental Economics.