Essays in Development Economics: Poverty, Religion and Mental Health
Citation:
Us-Salam, Danish, Essays in Development Economics: Poverty, Religion and Mental Health, Trinity College Dublin, School of Social Sciences & Philosophy, Economics, 2024Download Item:
Abstract:
This dissertation includes three standalone chapters, each focused on augmenting
our knowledge of three issues in the literature on asset transfers, religion, and mental
health.
The first essay (Chapter 1) investigates whether a women-targeted asset transfer pro-
gram can lift households out of poverty in a post-pandemic context (Sierra Leone).
Using a randomized controlled trial, we assess the program’s effects on income, food
security, non-food consumption, and asset ownership among the targeted ultra-poor
households. Two years after the program, our findings indicate that the program
led to significant improvements in these outcomes across the entire sample. How-
ever, we observe a larger impact in districts with lower Ebola incidence rates. We
attribute this variation in treatment effects to the infrastructural damage and lack
of community support caused by the Ebola crisis, which may have constrained the
program’s potential in the hardest-hit areas. Our results highlight the importance of
considering the local context when designing and implementing asset transfer pro-
grams in post-pandemic settings and suggest that complementary efforts to rebuild
infrastructure can enhance the effectiveness of such interventions.
The second essay (Chapter 2) studies the health effects of religious practices in
the month of Ramadan, one of the central pillars of Islam. Ramadan requires
Muslims to fast daily from dawn to sunset and thus may have physiological and
psychological consequences. To establish causality, we use two rounds of a large-scale
survey in Bangladesh and exploit the variation in the day on which households were
interviewed. This paper reports four main results: (i) households decrease aggregate
consumption levels across all income groups, (ii) Ramadan serves as a negative health
shock which is larger in absolute terms for households in the bottom 50% of wealth
consequently pushing them closer to the WHO malnourished guideline, (iii) the
adverse health shock on households isn’t translated into a similar shock for children
under 5 in the same households and (iv) finally a net zero effect on subjective well-being. Together, our results suggest that voluntary adherence to religious practices
changes individual behavior in ways that have negative implications for physiological
health but no implications for psychological health.
The third essay (Chapter 3) investigates adolescent girls’ mental health in Uganda
during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper adds to the existing evidence base by
drawing on 3 rounds of panel data (2019–2021) to assess changes in adolescent mental
health among 468 young women aged 13–19 years residing in rural to semi-urban
villages in Uganda before and during the pandemic. Using fixed effects models, we
find increases in symptoms of moderate-to-severe depression as measured by both the
Patient Health Questionnaire-8 during the pandemic and accompanying lockdown
measures. We also find that adolescent girls who faced a higher COVID-19 burden
exhibit stronger declines in mental health. Our findings shed light on the impacts
of the pandemic on young women’s mental health in an LMIC context and suggest
the need for age-, gender-, and vulnerability-targeted policies that ensure that the
pandemic does not undo current progress toward a more gender-equitable world.
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https://tcdlocalportal.tcd.ie/pls/EnterApex/f?p=800:71:0::::P71_USERNAME:USSALAMDDescription:
APPROVED
Author: Us-Salam, Danish
Advisor:
Guariso, AndreaGulesci, Selim
Publisher:
Trinity College Dublin. School of Social Sciences & Philosophy. Discipline of EconomicsType of material:
ThesisAvailability:
Full text availableKeywords:
Religion, Mental Health, PovertyMetadata
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