Can information alone change behavior? Response to arsenic contamination of groundwater in Bangladesh

We study how effectively information induces Bangladeshi households to avoid a health risk. The response to information is large and rapid; knowing that the household's well water has an unsafe concentration of arsenic raises the probability that the household changes to another well within one year by 0.37. Households who change wells increase the time spent obtaining water fifteen-fold. We identify a causal effect of information, since incidence of arsenic is uncorrelated with household characteristics. Our door-to-door information campaign provides well-specific arsenic levels without which behavior does not change. Media communicate general information about arsenic less expensively and no less effectively.     

Economic Citizenship: Neoliberal Paradoxes of Empowerment

ABSTRACT

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the impact of the Child Support Grant (CSG) implemented in South Africa on the labor supply of the parents of beneficiary children. The aim is to assess whether the program improved or lessened gender inequality in the labor market. Using data from a national panel survey and applying a fuzzy regression discontinuity design that exploits an expansion in eligibility due to a discontinuous change in age eligibility, the results show that the CSG had a negative effect on the probability of parents of beneficiary children being employed and mixed effects on the participation in the labor force, with substantial heterogeneity by gender and by other individual and household characteristics. Overall, the evaluation suggests that the program provided support to members of vulnerable households in coping with the constraints of the South African labor market, but it did not reshape existing gender inequalities.     

Choice and Constraint in paid work: Women from low-income households in Tehran

ABSTRACT

Based on interviews and participant observation conducted in 2009–10 in Tehran among women living in low-income communities, this contribution examines the complex ways in which women experience paid work. Most low-income Iranian women interviewed had conflicted views about paid employment. Some held up the male breadwinner as ideal, occasionally invoking Islam to limit their engagement in work they viewed as socially stigmatizing, physically difficult, or low paying. Others, particularly younger and unmarried women, had more positive views of work. Class, age, type of employment, and marital status all played roles in shaping women's experiences; but among women with similar characteristics, considerable differences were also apparent. Building off previous work that rejects simplistic dualisms such as choice versus constraint or exploitation versus empowerment, this contribution argues for more nuanced categories that allow for an emphasis on the conflicted ways women experience paid work.