Conference Agenda

Improving water access can reduce the burden of time spent on water collection and enhance child health. However, most evidence comes from interventions with limited scope, and it remains unclear how benefits are distributed between advantaged and disadvantaged groups when programs are scaled to fill regional or national coverage gaps.

We examine the gendered and distributional impacts of India’s universal tap water policy.

Exploiting temperature shocks that affect water demand, we find that the policy reduces water collection time, particularly for women and marginalized caste groups. At the same time, however, by examining district-level variations in tap water expansion, we identify an increase in child mortality, particularly among these marginalized groups. Our results suggest a possible quantity-quality tradeoff in scaling infrastructure and a need for more careful mitigation of potentially adverse behavioral responses.

Limited evidence on the health effects of water contaminants has stymied the development of more stringent drinking water regulation. We evaluate the effects of the 2006 Final Arsenic Rule – a fiscally unpopular regulation which lowered the drinking water arsenic standard from 50 to 10 µ g/l – on infant health outcomes, a category not considered in prospective rule-making. Leveraging exogenous variation in policy binding status induced by the geological distribution of arsenic, we estimate annual health benefits of $85–303 million, shifting the benefit–cost ratio from 0.74 to 1.23 at the low end. Benefits largely accrue to Hispanic and Asian mothers despite widespread reductions in drinking water arsenic across populations, suggesting heightened sensitivity to arsenic exposure.

While extensive research has documented the health impacts of extreme heat, its implications for domestic violence remain largely undeveloped. This study examines the impact of compound humid heat on the online expression of domestic violence in China. Using geo-tagged Sina Weibo social media post data for 347 cities over 2018–2020, the findings indicate days with a maximum wet-bulb temperature above 29°C are associated with a marked increase in domestic violence–related online expression. The impact is short-lived, peaking within 0–2 days and fading thereafter. We further find that female political empowerment amplifies the effect, while economic and cultural empowerment tends to reduce it. Mechanism analyses suggest that high wet-bulb temperatures induce significant increases in online expression of depression- and anxiety-related sentiments, as well as reduced outdoor mobility. The findings provide evidence of gendered aspects of extreme weather and climate change.

This study assesses the long-term health consequences of the 2006 toxic waste dumping in Ivory Coast. Using geospatial matching between dumping sites and Demographic and Health Surveys household clusters, we measure exposure as distance to the nearest contaminated location. Our results show that each additional 10 kilometers of distance improves weight-for-age and weight-for-height scores by 0.11 and 0.10 standard deviations and reduces the likelihood of underweight and wasting among children aged 0-5 years by 3 and 2 percentage points. Evidence on mechanisms points to adverse birth conditions and deteriorating local economic activity as key channels. The findings highlight the enduring health burden of cross-border hazardous waste flows, and the environmental justice challenges they generate in developing countries.