Evaluating Long-Term Impacts of Sustained Mass Deworming: South Korea 1969-1995
2019/10/22
研討會日期 : 2019-10-22
時間 : 14:30
主講人 : Professor Jungho Kim
主持人 : Professor Tzu-Ting Yang
地點 : Conference Room B110
演講者簡介 : Professor Kim received his Ph.D. in Economics from Brown University in 2005. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Ajou University. His research interests are Labor and Demographic Economics, Economic Development and Applied Econometrics.
演講摘要 : South Korea successfully implemented a sustained, nation-wide deworming campaign for more than two decades and culminated in 1995 when the WHO declared the country to be essentially worm-free. We study the long-term impact of this sustained deworming campaign on educational attainment and productivity gains. We employ difference-in-differences method based on the observation that the initial geographical variation in infection rates disappeared in less than two decades. The results suggest that full exposure to the risk of soil-transmitted helminthes infection during childhood decreases the years of schooling by around one year and the probability of achieving a high school diploma by 21%p. The effect of the campaign on earnings is found to operate through education with no direct effect. Furthermore, the effect on secondary education is estimated to be larger for women than for men, which implies that the consequence of the campaign depends on gender-specific labor market opportunity.
