Access to preventive and restorative dental care is a critical public health problem in the United States, particularly for those without insurance and those covered by public programs. Public health policy initiatives such as the use of dental therapists should be expanded to improve access and to provide alternatives that offer more complete and less costly care for oral health problems than do hospital ERs.
This paper exploits a recently implemented randomised control trial in Madagascar that focused on management reforms. It investigates whether the impact of the reforms varies by the type of teacher. This is an important issue because Madagascar, like many other developing countries, has recently hired a large number of contract or temporary teachers, who have less training but may be motivated to work harder in order to have their contracts renewed. The management reforms did not have any impact on student test scores. This lack of an impact holds for all types of teachers. It may be that two years is not enough time for the program to have had a measurable impact, but it is also possible that the program is ineffective, at least in the context of Madagascar's educational system. The authors are indebted to Esther Duflo for her contribution to setting up the experimental design for this impact evaluation. They also thank the staff at Madagascar's Ministry of Education, led by Tahinarinoro Razafindramary and Paul Randrianirina, and the staff of Aide et Action, for help in designing the workflow tools, implementing the experiment, and collecting the data. The authors also appreciate Pierre-Emmanuel Couralet and Erika Strand for on-theground supervision during the experiment and Mathieu Laroche and Muriel Nicot-Guillorel for technical support to the Malagasy counterparts. The authors also thank
Since their independence, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have used input subsidies to increase agricultural productivity and improve food security. We analyse the effects of both a fertiliser and a seed subsidy on farming households' land allocation among crops and crop diversity in Burkina Faso. Although previous studies investigated either the impact of a fertiliser or a seed subsidy on targeted crops, few examined the effects of both subsidies combined. Applying a correlated random-effects model with a control function approach to nationally representative, 2-year panel data collected from farming households, we find that those with access to the fertiliser subsidy allocate more land to the crops it targets (rice, maize and cotton) than non-targeted crops. Focusing on a minor crop with key agronomic and nutritional attributes, we conclude that land allocation to cowpea as the primary crop and intercrop declined with the fertiliser subsidy.The fertiliser subsidy also negatively affects crop diversity. However, we find that the cowpea seed subsidy offsets the bias of fertiliser subsidy toward fertiliser-targeted crops and enhances diversity.In developing agricultural economies, the increasing use of modern inputs, such as chemical fertiliser, has been associated with higher agricultural productivity, especially when combined with improved seed varieties and/or adequate provision of moisture through irrigation infrastructure (Erisman et al., 2008;Morris, 2007;Smil, 2002). Historically, as a reflection of infrastructural impediments, such as sparse road networks and distance from ports, farmers in sub-Saharan Africa have used fertiliser at substantially lower rates than farmers in Asia and Latin America (Heisey & Norton, 2007). Although average fertiliser usage in sub-Saharan Africa grew by 8% annually in the early 2000s (Ariga et al., 2019) and almost doubled from 2008 (12 kg/ha) to 2018 (20 kg/ha), use rates are still well below the international average of 136 kg/ha (AFAP, 2020;World Bank, 2019).Increasing the use of modern inputs has been a policy aim in many countries of sub-Saharan Africa since their independence. Low fertiliser use has been considered a key contributing factor to lagging agricultural productivity growth in sub-Saharan Africa (Morris, 2007). High fertiliser prices, often reflecting substantial transport costs in landlocked countries such as Burkina Faso, and limited access to credit are key reasons for low fertiliser use (Gro Intelligence, 2016;Morris, 2007). The first generation of government-managed subsidy programmes resulted in unsustainable fiscal burdens, and these were dismantled during the 1990s as part of the World Bank's structural adjustment programmes. However, since the Abuja Declaration on Fertiliser in 2006, 'smart' input subsidies have proliferated in sub-Saharan
Typescript prepared by Janis Vehmaan-Kreula at UNU-WIDER. UNU-WIDER gratefully acknowledges specific programme contributions from the governments of Denmark (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Danida) and Sweden (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency-Sida) for ReCom. UNU-WIDER also gratefully acknowledges core financial support to its work programme from the governments of Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER) was established by the United Nations University (UNU) as its first research and training centre and started work in Helsinki, Finland in 1985. The Institute undertakes applied research and policy analysis on structural changes affecting the developing and transitional economies, provides a forum for the advocacy of policies leading to robust, equitable and environmentally sustainable growth, and promotes capacity strengthening and training in the field of economic and social policy-making. Work is carried out by staff researchers and visiting scholars in Helsinki and through networks of collaborating scholars and institutions around the world.
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