Conference Agenda

Reducing infant mortality is a central development challenge. This paper studies how the growth of an informal economic activity shapes this challenge by examining the net health impacts of artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASgM), now the predominant non-farm rural livelihood in many African countries. While ASgM raises incomes, it also generates substantial environmental externalities dangerous for infant health, both in its immediate vicinity, and through water pollution transmitted along river networks. We combine geocoded Demographic and Health Surveys covering more than 790,000 births in 33 African countries with geological gold suitability, international gold price fluctuations and hydrological basin data. Exploiting the exogeneity of shifts to mining incentives due to the international commodity market and the directionality of river systems, we distinguish the impacts of local mining exposure–where income and pollution effects coexist–from down-stream exposure, where environmental externalities are more likely to dominate. We find that exposure to upstream ASgM significantly increases infant mortality. In contrast, effects are muted in communities where mining can take place. We also show that the impacts of upstream ASgM are driven by areas that rely heavily on local river systems and subsistence agriculture, namely, rural areas and non-coastal areas. These findings reveal a spatially uneven health–wealth tradeoff where ASgM

externalities maybe invisible in practicing communities, but diffuse, water-mediated pollution from informal mining undermines progress toward child survival goals for far many more people downstream from them.

Can subsidized electric cooking accelerate the clean cooking transition while remaining economically viable? In a randomized experiment with 1,594 households in Goma, DRC, we distributed fully subsidized Electric Pressure Cookers (EPCs). Usage was high - 25% of meals - and charcoal use fell by 34%. Households cut overall monthly energy spending by $5.76 but increased electricity purchases by $2.75, enabling subsidy recovery through a ’razor and blade’ model. After just one year of usage, the welfare gains - including lower CO2 emissions and conservation outcomes for the endangered Mountain Gorillas - are almost twice higher than the cost of the subsidy.

Resource booms are often associated with adverse distributional effects across economies. We exploit temporal and spatial variation generated by the copper boom in the 2000s to measure the effect of mineral resource extraction on human capital investment in Zambia. Combining data from repeated cross-sections of households and mines, we find that adolescent girls near mines have lower school attendance and higher engagement in paid work. We argue that the main pull factor is the increase in the demand for labor among sectors where women typically dominate. As more adult women marry and married women live in households that benefit from the wealth generated by spouses, adolescent girls fill the gap previously met by adult women in the labor market. Our findings suggest that resource booms induce inequitable distributional effects across generations of women.