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Staying Alive: Adult Literacy Programs and Child Mortality in Rural Ghana

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  • Blunch, Niels-Hugo

Abstract

This paper estimates the causal effect of maternal participation in adult literacy programs on child mortality in rural Ghana, taking into account the possible endogeneity of program participation and endogenous program placement. Adult literacy program participation has a substantial impact on child mortality and is also cost-effective in reducing child mortality. The combined results of this paper point toward the potentially important role of adult literacy programs in promoting child health in Ghana through the acquisition of health knowledge by participants—in stark contrast with the decreased attention toward such programs in the developing world in recent years.

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  • Blunch, Niels-Hugo, 2013. "Staying Alive: Adult Literacy Programs and Child Mortality in Rural Ghana," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 114-126.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:42:y:2013:i:c:p:114-126
    DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2012.06.021
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    Cited by:

    1. Deshpande, Ashwini & Desrochers, Alain & Ksoll, Christopher & Shonchoy, Abu S., 2017. "The Impact of a Computer-based Adult Literacy Program on Literacy and Numeracy: Evidence from India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 451-473.
    2. Emily Smith-Greenaway, 2015. "Educational attainment and adult literacy," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 33(35), pages 1015-1034.
    3. Niels-Hugo Blunch & Jeffrey S. Hammer, 2018. "The Last of the Lost Generations? Formal and Non-Formal Education in Ghana during Times of Economic Decline and Recovery," Journal of African Development, African Finance and Economic Association (AFEA), vol. 20(2), pages 35-60.
    4. Derek Headey & Giordano Palloni, 2019. "Water, Sanitation, and Child Health: Evidence From Subnational Panel Data in 59 Countries," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(2), pages 729-752, April.
    5. Niels-Hugo Blunch, 2018. "A Teenager in Love: Multidimensional Human Capital and Teenage Pregnancy in Ghana," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(3), pages 557-573, March.
    6. Kenneth Harttgen & Stefan Lang & Judith Santer, 2015. "Multilevel Modelling of Child Mortality in Africa," Working Papers 2015-03, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    7. Thomas,Michael Stephen Charles & Knowland, Victoria C. P. & Rogers, Cathy, 2020. "The Science of Adult Literacy," Policy Research Working Paper Series 145579, The World Bank.
    8. Vassallo, Jarrod P. & Banerjee, Sourindra & Zaman, Hasanuzzaman & Prabhu, Jaideep C., 2023. "Design thinking and public sector innovation: The divergent effects of risk-taking, cognitive empathy and emotional empathy on individual performance," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(6).
    9. Niels-Hugo Blunch, 2017. "Adult literacy programs in developing countries," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 374-374, July.
    10. Pierce, Hayley & Foster, Kathryn, 2020. "Health and well-being outcomes of women and children in Sub-Saharan Africa: Examining the role of formal schooling, literacy, and health knowledge," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    11. Evans, David K. & Popova, Anna, 2016. "Cost-Effectiveness Analysis in Development: Accounting for Local Costs and Noisy Impacts," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 262-276.
    12. Nishant Chadha & Soma Wadhwa, 2018. "Impact of an Adult Literacy Programme on the Personal and Public Lives of Women," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 13(1), pages 82-111, April.
    13. Adaiah Lilenstein, 2020. "Better measures of progress: Developing reliable estimates of educational access and quality in Francophone sub-Saharan Africa," Working Papers 13/2020, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.

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