Michelle Layvant

Primary-school dropout remains widespread in Sub-Saharan Africa, and school fees are a major barrier to completion. In an experiment with 2,000 parents in eastern Uganda, we study whether time inconsistent preferences help explain why fees go unpaid. We elicit parents' willingness to pay for two restrictions on a cash transfer, delaying it until fees are due and, holding timing fixed, earmarking it as a voucher paid directly to the school. Demand for both restrictions is substantial. Sixty-nine percent of parents are willing to pay for earmarking and 62 percent for delay. We then randomly assign parents to receive the same amount as cash six weeks before fees are due, as cash when fees are due, as a voucher, or no transfer. Both cash transfers modestly increase fee payment, with no additional effect from delay. In contrast, the voucher substantially increases fee payment and reduces within-term dropout by more than half, without detectably worse household outcomes. Fee-day cash and the voucher also raise school attendance. The voucher's effects on fee payment and attendance are at least as large among parents who prefer cash as among those who prefer the voucher. This divergence partly reflects misprediction. Parents substantially underestimate the effect of earmarking on their own fee payment. In a model of quasi-hyperbolic discounting, these findings are consistent with partial naïveté, in which parents anticipate their own time inconsistency but underestimate its severity.

We assess impacts of a randomized deworming intervention in Kenya on the mortality of recipients' children using 23-year longitudinal data on over 5,500 original participants and their offspring. The under-5 mortality rate fell by 22% (17 deaths per 1000 live births) for children of treatment group individuals, with larger effects when considering the in-utero period due to reduced miscarriage. A combination of improved health, education, living standards and use of health care, increased urban residence, and delayed fertility in the parent generation contributed to the reduction. The results provide evidence for meaningful intergenerational benefits of child health investments.

We estimate the short-term cognitive effects of fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) exposure using novel exposure data collected during cognitive testing in Kenya. Unlike most existing studies that rely on satellite-based or fixed monitoring station data, we measure highly localized ambient pollution using portable monitors deployed at cognitive testing sites and link these readings directly to Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) scores. Higher PM_2.5 exposure during testing is associated with lower cognitive performance, particularly in executive function, memory, and visuospatial tasks. Binned exposure models suggest a monotonic pattern, with more negative estimates at higher exposure levels. Notably, effects are significantly larger among more educated individuals, possibly due to greater task demands or lower chronic exposure that limits physiological adaptation. Given that cognitive impairment is evident even at PM_2.5 levels below Kenya’s mean annual regulatory threshold of 35 μg/m³, the findings suggest that short-term exposure may impose underappreciated human capital costs that current regulatory standards fail to mitigate. The results highlight the potential cognitive and economic returns to interventions that reduce air pollution exposures in low-resource settings.