Can Intense Exposure to Hand-Washing and Hygiene Information Campaigns Affect Children's Socio-Emotional Skills? : Evidence from Senegal

Borja-Vega, Christian ; Briceno, Bertha ; Garcia, Vicente

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: SKILLS;    SANITATION;    WATER QUALITY;    CHILD HEALTH;    INFERENCE;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7472
RP-ID  :  WPS7472

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Hygiene information and practices play acritical role in preventing diseases, particularly amongchildren. Hygiene behaviors practiced in the household havebeen linked to development outcomes such as socio-emotionalskills. This paper exploits data from impact evaluationsurveys of a hygiene information campaign conducted inSenegal, where the randomized design suffered fromcontamination between comparison groups. The variations inexposure and intensity to hygiene information campaignscaptured in the surveys were used to understandcontamination biases. Such variations were interacted withthe presence of household communication assets to explorepotential effects on children’s socio-emotional scores. Inthe presence of contamination biases, the study exploitedthe longitudinal sample of children in the surveys to reducetime-dependent biases. For robustness, statistical matchingwas applied between the impact evaluation surveys andDemographic and Health Surveys conducted in 2008 and 2011.Socio-emotional outcomes were the imputed into Demographicand Health surveys to expand sample sizes. By applyingmatching techniques and imputing outcomes into a largersample, impacts were non-negligible. Double-differenceestimates showed that children’s socio-emotional scores werehigher when intervention status was interacted with thepresence of communication assets within households. Withoutthe presence of communication assets in the households theimpacts were close to zero. Evaluating the effect of hygienecampaigns on children’s socio-emotional skills ischallenging because of the biases from contamination thatexist when information flows between comparison groups.Targeted hygiene information to the poorest households isrelevant for reducing risks of recurrent infections andenables better conditions for socio-emotional development of children.