Large-scale health interventions and education: Evidence from Roll Back Malaria in Africa

Maria Kuecken (1, 2) , Josselin Thuilliez (1) , Marie-Anne Valfort (1, 2)

1 CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne
2 PSE - Paris School of Economics

Replying on microeconomic data, we examine the impact of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) campaigns on the educational attainment of primary schoolchildren across 14 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Combining a difference-in-differences approach with an instrumental variables analysis, we exploit exogenous variation in pre-campaign malaria risk and exogenous variation in exposure to the timing and disbursements of the RBM campaign. In 13 of 14 countries, the RBM campaign substantially improved schooling attainment at an average cost of $ 13.19 per additional year, which is highly cost-effective as compared to standard educational interventions.

Mots clés: Roll Back Malaria; quasi-experiment; Health; education; Africa; spillovers

Domaines: Economies et finances

Maria Kuecken, Josselin Thuilliez, Marie-Anne Valfort. Large-scale health interventions and education: Evidence from Roll Back Malaria in Africa. 2015. ⟨halshs-00881371v2⟩