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A large literature examines the link between shocks to households and the educational attainment of children. We use new panel data to estimate the impact of shocks to teachers on student learning in Mathematics and English. Using absenteeism in the 30 days preceding the survey as a measure of these shocks, we find no impact for the full sample, but a large impact for a subsample for which we can control for unobserved changes in teacher heterogeneity: A 5 percent increase in the teacher's absence rate reduces learning by 4 to 8 percent of average gains over the year. Health problems--primarily teachers' own illness and the illnesses of their family members--account for more than 60 percent of teacher absences. This is not surprising in a country struggling with an HIV/AIDS epidemic. (Contains 13 tables and 16 footnotes. The Appendix, Measuring Teacher Absence, contains tables showing trend data.)[This article was produced by University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI.]

Using unique data from four developing countries, this paper explores the relationship between material poverty and the psychosocial competencies of children. Within a cohort of 12-year-olds, we find that measures of self-efficacy, sense of inclusion, self-esteem and educational aspirations all correlate with measures of the material well-being of the family in which they are growing up. In short, material circumstances shape these wider dimensions of child well-being. As other evidence has shown, these measures of psychosocial competencies reflect important life skills that affect children as adults and shape their future socio-economic status. This suggests a mechanism by which poverty may be transmitted across generations. In addition, our evidence shows how a caregiver's education and school participation affects children's psychosocial competencies. This may indicate a possible means of overcoming such transmission of poverty over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the article by Michael Carter and Chris Barrett on asset thresholds and poverty traps concerned with developing positive theories of poverty. He believes that the giving of transfers to the poorest is not necessarily the most effective poverty-reducing policy. He considers the model proposed by Carter and Barrett as narrow in terms of its diagnosis of the problems of poverty traps and risk, and narrow in terms of the policy implications and solutions it proposes.

Introduction: Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, was set up in 2000 to improve access to vaccines for children living in the poorest countries. Funding has increased significantly over time, with Gavi disbursements reaching US $1.58 billion in 2015. We assess whether Gavi's funding programmes have indeed increased immunisation coverage in 51 recipient countries for two key vaccines for 12-23 month olds: combined diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus (DPT) and measles. Additionally, we look at effects on infant and child mortality., Methods: Taking a difference-in-differences quasi-experimental approach to observational data, we estimate the impact of Gavi eligibility on immunisation coverage and mortality rates over time, using WHO/UNICEF figures covering 1995-2016. We control for economy size and population of each country as well as running a suite of robustness checks and sensitivity tests., Results: We find large and significant positive effects from Gavi's funding programmes: on average a 12.02 percentage point increase in DPT immunisation coverage (95% CI 6.56 to 17.49) and an 8.81 percentage point increase in measles immunisation coverage (95% CI 3.58 to 14.04) over the period to 2016. Our estimates show Gavi support also induced 6.22 fewer infant deaths (95% CI -10.47 to -1.97) and 12.23 fewer under-five deaths (95% CI -19.66 to -4.79) per 1000 live births., Conclusion: Our findings provide evidence that Gavi has had a substantial impact on the fight against communicable diseases for improved population and child health in lower-income countries. In this case, the health policy to verticalise aid-specifically development assistance for health-via a specialised global fund has had positive outcomes., Competing Interests: Competing interests: SD reports grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, during the conduct of the study., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.)

Background: The HIV epidemic exacerbated the prevalence of prime-aged adult death in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, resulting in increased rates of orphanhood. Little is known about whether this will coincide with adverse psychosocial well-being in adulthood for those who were orphaned at childhood., Methods: We studied a cohort of 1108 children from Kagera, a region of Tanzania that was heavily affected by HIV early in the epidemic. During the baseline data collection in 1991-1994, these children were aged 0-16 years and had both parents alive. We followed them roughly 16-19 years later in 2010, by which time 531 children (36%) had lost either one or both parents before their 19th birthday. We compared the 2010 10-item Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) score between children who lost a parent before the age of 19 and those who did not. We used the baseline data to control for preorphanhood confounders. This is important because we find that children who will lose their fathers in the future before age 19 came from somewhat lower socioeconomic backgrounds., Results: We found no correlation between maternal death and self-esteem measured through RSES. Paternal death was strongly correlated with lower levels of self-esteem (0.2 SDs lower RSES 95% confidence interval: 0.059 to 0.348), and the correlation was stronger when the death occurred during the child's teenage years. These effects are a net of socioeconomic differences that existed before the orphanhood event., Conclusions: Our study supports the further development and piloting of programs that address psychosocial problems of orphans.