Policy Issues for Bangladesh: Climate Change, Rapid Urbanazation, Public Health and Social Harmony
Paper Session
Friday, Jan. 5, 2024 10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (CST)
- Chair: Fahad Khalil, University of Washington
Behavioral Transmission: Evidence from a Public Health Campaign in Bangladesh
Abstract
We examine how behavior change transmits across contexts in the setting of hand hygiene in rural Bangladesh. We randomize an edutainment intervention across classrooms to trace school-to-home transmission in handwashing behavior and randomize the proportion of students who receive handwashing resources at home to track home-to-school transmission. We document that while edutainment generates greater washing at school, it leads to substantially less washing at home, such that total washing is a net negative. Likewise, children induced to wash more at home exhibit substantially less washing at school. Our results illustrate that successfully promoting behavior in one environment may crowd out like behavior in another critical context. They highlight an unintended consequence of behavior change interventions, like those often implemented in early childhood education, that assume complementarities in behavior across contexts.Leveraging Edutainment and Social Networks to Foster Interethnic Harmony
Abstract
Can interethnic attitudes be improved through the use of educational entertainment? This paper presents the findings of a cluster randomized control trial investigating the impact of information dissemination via a documentary film aimed at educating the ethnically dominant Bengalis about the ethnic minority Santals in polyethnic villages in Bangladesh. Using lab-in-the-field experiments involving over 3,300 households across 120 villages, we found that exposure to this information increased the ethnic majority's altruism, trust, and solidarity toward minorities. Using emotion-detecting software to analyze facial expressions during the film viewing, we found that empathy played a significant role in this process. Additionally, we discovered that targeting network-central households with the intervention generated large positive spillovers on other households within villages, including those of the Santals. We further corroborate this finding with a separate labor market field experiment and administrative data. Our findings highlight the power of edutainment and social networks in promoting interethnic harmony.Missing the Target: Does Increased Capacity of the Local Government Improve Beneficiary Selection?
Abstract
To improve the targeting of social policies, research has focused on incentivizingand holding local decision makers accountable. This paper identifies local government
capacity as another key constraint that has received little attention. We
examine whether and how a locally implemented capacity building intervention including
training and data provision for the national Old Age Allowance program
in Bangladesh can improve the selection of beneficiaries. The results of a largescale
cluster randomized controlled trial with 80 rural local government areas show
that the intervention improved knowledge of eligibility criteria but we do not find
significant evidence for an overall improvement in the targeting performance. We
further document that improvements in the targeting performance depend on the
willingness of the selection committee to improve beneficiary selection and that
illegal fee collection is widespread.
Discussant(s)
Viola Asri
,
Chr. Michelsen Institute
Abu Siddique
,
Royal Holloway University of London
Dayea Oh
,
Pepperdine University
Ashley Pople
,
University of Oxford
JEL Classifications
- O1 - Economic Development
- R4 - Transportation Economics