IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/21849.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Expanding Governance as Development: Evidence on Child Nutrition in the Philippines

Author

Listed:
  • Eli Berman
  • Mitch Downey
  • Joseph Felter

Abstract

Worldwide, extreme poverty is often concentrated in spaces where people and property are not safe enough to sustain effective markets, and where development assistance is dangerous – and might even induce violence. Expanding governance by coercively taking control of territory may enable markets and development programs, but costs to local residents may exceed benefits, especially if that expansion is violent. We estimate for the first time whether a large counterinsurgency program improves welfare. We exploit the staggered roll-out of the Philippine “Peace and Development Teams” counterinsurgency program, which treated 12% of the population between 2002 and 2010. Though treatment temporarily increased violence, the program progressively reduced child malnutrition: by 10% in the first year, and by 30% from year three onwards. Improved nutritional status was not due to increased health and welfare expenditures, but instead to improved governance. Treatment effects are comparable to those of conventional child health interventions, though conventional programs are likely infeasible in this setting. Rebels apparently react to treatment by shifting to neighboring municipalities, as malnutrition worsens there – with statistically significant 'treatment' effects of similar size. Thus overall program effects are close to zero. These findings invite an evidence-based discussion of governance expansion, an extensive margin of development.

Suggested Citation

  • Eli Berman & Mitch Downey & Joseph Felter, 2016. "Expanding Governance as Development: Evidence on Child Nutrition in the Philippines," NBER Working Papers 21849, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21849
    Note: DEV EH PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21849.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jacobson, Louis S & LaLonde, Robert J & Sullivan, Daniel G, 1993. "Earnings Losses of Displaced Workers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(4), pages 685-709, September.
    2. Benjamin Crost & Joseph H. Felter & Hani Mansour & Daniel I. Rees, 2013. "Election Fraud and Post-Election Conflict: Evidence from the Philippines," HiCN Working Papers 158, Households in Conflict Network.
    3. Louis S. Jacobson & Robert J. LaLonde & Daniel G. Sullivan, 1993. "Long-term earnings losses of high-seniority displaced workers," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 17(Nov), pages 2-20.
    4. Hoynes, Hilary & Page, Marianne & Stevens, Ann Huff, 2011. "Can targeted transfers improve birth outcomes?: Evidence from the introduction of the WIC program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 813-827, August.
    5. Oliver Vanden Eynde, 2015. "Mining Royalties and Incentives for Security Operations: Evidence from India's Red Corridor," Working Papers halshs-01245496, HAL.
    6. Esther Duflo, 2003. "Grandmothers and Granddaughters: Old-Age Pensions and Intrahousehold Allocation in South Africa," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank Group, vol. 17(1), pages 1-25, June.
    7. Grossman, Herschel I, 1999. "Kleptocracy and Revolutions," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 51(2), pages 267-283, April.
    8. Eli Berman & Joseph H. Felter & Jacob N. Shapiro & Erin Troland, 2013. "Modest, Secure, and Informed: Successful Development in Conflict Zones," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 512-517, May.
    9. A. Colin Cameron & Jonah B. Gelbach & Douglas L. Miller, 2008. "Bootstrap-Based Improvements for Inference with Clustered Errors," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(3), pages 414-427, August.
    10. Paul Collier, 2000. "Rebellion as a Quasi-Criminal Activity," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 44(6), pages 839-853, December.
    11. Berman, Eli & Matanock, Aila, 2015. "The Empiricists' Insurgency," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt5zs4h0sh, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    12. Timothy Besley & Torsten Persson, 2011. "The Logic of Political Violence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 126(3), pages 1411-1445.
    13. repec:clg:wpaper:2013-17 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Lavy, Victor & Strauss, John & Thomas, Duncan & de Vreyer, Philippe, 1996. "Quality of health care, survival and health outcomes in Ghana," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 333-357, June.
    15. Zivin, Joshua Graff & Thirumurthy, Harsha & Goldstein, Markus, 2009. "AIDS treatment and intrahousehold resource allocation: Children's nutrition and schooling in Kenya," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(7-8), pages 1008-1015, August.
    16. James G. MacKinnon & Matthew D. Webb, 2017. "Wild Bootstrap Inference for Wildly Different Cluster Sizes," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(2), pages 233-254, March.
    17. North,Douglass C. & Wallis,John Joseph & Webb,Steven B. & Weingast,Barry R. (ed.), 2013. "In the Shadow of Violence," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107684911, January.
    18. Eli Berman & Joseph Felter & Ethan Kapstein & Erin Troland, 2012. "Predation, Taxation, Investment, and Violence: Evidence from the Philippines," NBER Working Papers 18375, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Hoynes, Hilary & Page, Marianne & Stevens, Ann Huff, 2011. "Can targeted transfers improve birth outcomes?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 813-827.
    20. Abhijeet Singh & Albert Park & Stefan Dercon, 2014. "School Meals as a Safety Net: An Evaluation of the Midday Meal Scheme in India," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(2), pages 275-306.
    21. Sandler, Danielle H. & Sandler, Ryan, 2014. "Multiple event studies in public finance and labor economics: A simulation study with applications," Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, IOS Press, issue 1-2, pages 31-57.
    22. North,Douglass C. & Wallis,John Joseph & Webb,Steven B. & Weingast,Barry R. (ed.), 2013. "In the Shadow of Violence," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107014213, January.
    23. Phillips, David R., 1986. "Primary health care in the Philippines: Banking on the barangays?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 23(10), pages 1105-1117, January.
    24. Benjamin Crost & Joseph Felter & Patrick Johnston, 2014. "Aid under Fire: Development Projects and Civil Conflict," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(6), pages 1833-1856, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Iyer, Sriya & Shrivastava, Anand, 2018. "Religious riots and electoral politics in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 104-122.
    2. Downey, Mitch, 2021. "Did the war on terror deter ungoverned spaces? Not in Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    3. Adnan M.S. Fakir & Tushar Bharati, 2022. "Health Costs of a "Healthy Democracy": The Impact of Peaceful Political Protests on Healthcare Utilization," Working Paper Series 0522, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    4. Tushar Bharati & Adnan M. S. Fakir, 2022. "Health Costs of a “Healthy Democracy”: The Impact of Peaceful Political Protests on Healthcare Utilization," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 22-15, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eli Berman & Joseph Felter & Ethan Kapstein & Erin Troland, 2012. "Predation, Taxation, Investment, and Violence: Evidence from the Philippines," NBER Working Papers 18375, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Adrienne M. Lucas & Nicholas L. Wilson, 2018. "Can At-Scale Drug Provision Improve the Health of the Targeted in Sub-Saharan Africa?," American Journal of Health Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(3), pages 358-382, Summer.
    3. Zürcher, Christoph, 2017. "What Do We (Not) Know About Development Aid and Violence? A Systematic Review," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 506-522.
    4. Lindo, Jason M., 2011. "Parental job loss and infant health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 869-879.
    5. Vincent A. Floreani & Gladys López-Acevedo & Martín Rama, 2021. "Conflict and Poverty in Afghanistan’s Transition," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(10), pages 1776-1790, October.
    6. Owen O'Donnell & Eddy Van Doorslaer & Tom Van Ourti, 2013. "Health and Inequality," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 13-170/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    7. Di Maio, Michele & Nisticò, Roberto, 2019. "The effect of parental job loss on child school dropout: Evidence from the Occupied Palestinian Territories," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    8. Khanna, Gaurav & Zimmermann, Laura, 2017. "Guns and butter? Fighting violence with the promise of development," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 120-141.
    9. Travers Barclay Child & Elena Nikolova, 2017. "War and Social Attitudes: Revisiting Consensus Views," HiCN Working Papers 258, Households in Conflict Network.
    10. Gultekin Gollu & Mariyana Zapryanova, 2022. "The effect of Medicaid on recidivism: Evidence from Medicaid suspension and termination policies," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 89(2), pages 326-372, October.
    11. Swee, Eik Leong & Zhan, Haikun & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2021. "Do perceptions of economic well-being predict the onset of war and peace?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    12. Heidi Kaila & Saurabh Singhal & Divya Tuteja, 2017. "Do fences make good neighbours?: Evidence from an insurgency in India," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2017-158, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. Elizabeth Weber Handwerker & Lowell Mason, 2018. "What Happens to the Employers Involved in Mass Layoffs?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 85(2), pages 485-507, October.
    14. Kaila, Heidi & Singhal, Saurabh & Tuteja, Divya, 2020. "Development programs, security, and violence reduction: Evidence from an insurgency in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    15. Guojun He & Shaoda Wang, 2017. "Do College Graduates Serving as Village Officials Help Rural China?," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 186-215, October.
    16. Daniel Karell & Sebastian Schutte, 2018. "Aid, exclusion, and the local dynamics of insurgency in Afghanistan," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 55(6), pages 711-725, November.
    17. Kose, Esra & Kuka, Elira & Shenhav, Na'ama, 2016. "Women's Enfranchisement and Children's Education: The Long-Run Impact of the U.S. Suffrage Movement," IZA Discussion Papers 10148, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Habtamu Ali Beshir & Jean-François Maystadt, 2022. "Price shocks and human capital: Timing matters," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2022020, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    19. Heidi Kaila & Saurabh Singhal & Divya Tuteja, 2017. "Do fences make good neighbours? Evidence from an insurgency in India," WIDER Working Paper Series 158, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Catalina Tejada & Eliana Ferrara & Henrik Kleven & Florian Blum & Oriana Bandiera & Michel Azulai, 2015. "State Effectiveness, Growth, and Development," Working Papers id:6668, eSocialSciences.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F51 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Conflicts; Negotiations; Sanctions
    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21849. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.