Exploiting Externalities to Estimate the Long-Term Effects of Early Childhood Deworming

Exploiting Externalities to Estimate the Long-Term Effects of Early Childhood Deworming

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I investigate whether a school-based deworming intervention in Kenya had long-term effects on young children in the region. I exploit positive externalities from the program to estimate impacts on younger children who were not directly treated. Ten years after the intervention, I find large cognitive effects—comparable to between 0.5 and 0.8 years of schooling—for children who were less than one year old when their communities received mass deworming treatment. I find no effect on child height or stunting. Because treatment was administered through schools, I also estimate effects among children whose older siblings received treatment directly; in this subpopulation, effects on cognition are nearly twice as large.

July 27, 2016