The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Population Reference Bureau fund research that explores the relationships between population and economic development through the support of "Teams of Research Excellence" in the United States and globally. The purpose of the Teams of Research Excellence is to enhance research and policy communication in population, reproductive health, and economic development.
The near-term objective is to strengthen the evidence on how population affects economic outcomes in developing countries. A longer-term objective is for advocates and others to be guided by the findings of researchers to influence national and international policymakers, especially those in and supporting Africa, so they consider population and reproductive health outcomes appropriately in their development planning and policy agendas.
The teams join a growing international network of researchers to form a Community of Research Practice (CoRP) on Population, Reproductive Health, and Economic Development. Organizations involved in the CoRP are the Hewlett Foundation, Population Reference Bureau, the UK's Economic and Social Research Council, the World Bank, the African Economic Research Consortium, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, Centre Population et Développement and grantee academic institutions. The network of researchers established through these research programs will maintain contact through annual research conferences, biannual methodology workshops, and other activities to build the research community of interest. Researchers actively pursuing study in relevant fields are encouraged to contact the program sponsors for further information about funding and conference opportunities.
Grants Awarded in 2008
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Population Reference Bureau are proud to announce the winners of the 2008 Global Teams of Research Excellence in Population, Reproductive Health, and Economic Development Award. Their research will contribute significantly to understanding the relationship between health and economic development, and will inform policymaking on family planning and reproductive health topics so as to expand economic opportunities for women.
A request for proposals was announced in August 2007. Sixteen proposals were received in response to the call. Each proposal was carefully reviewed for conformance with basic eligibility and content criteria. The eligible proposals were reviewed by an expert panel consisting of the following researchers:
- T. Paul Schultz, Yale University
- Mark Rosenzweig, Yale University
- Duncan Thomas, Duke University
- Tesfayie Gebreselassie, ORC Macro
- Olu Ajakaiye, African Economic Research Consortium
- Robert Eastwood, University of Sussex
- David Weil, Brown University
Below are descriptions of the winning research proposals. We look forward to the advances in knowledge that these programs will achieve.
Harvard University
Principal Investigators: Nava Ashraf and Erica Field
Experimental Approaches to Assessing the Economic Determinants and Consequences of Contraceptive Adoption in Zambia
The project explores factors that influence use of contraceptives and the effects of contraception in urban Zambia. It will use data from a random experiment that the PIs have designed and implemented in Lusaka, Zambia, to address three questions:
- What is the effect of reducing the price of a contraceptive on allocations of time and goods by women?
- What role does spousal disagreement over fertility and contraceptive use play in these decisions?
- What are the effects on peer groups?
Harvard University and the University of Ghana
Principal Investigators: Allan Hill and Ernest Aryeetey
Reproductive and Overall Health Outcomes and Their Economic Consequences for Households in Accra, Ghana
The program of research is built on reinterviewing the respondents in 400 households to a Women's Health Study in Accra in 2003. There is also a parallel five-year study aimed at reinterviewing all 3,200 households from the 2003 study, primarily for health information. This project will analyze the dynamic evolution of employment, household income and expenditure patterns, and their long-term effects on health on family building and household composition. Central to the proposal is quantifying the impact of morbidity in a household on women's work and earnings. The work will be coordinated with ISSER at the University of Ghana. Detailed data will be gathered from a small within-sample survey of men and women on reproductive health behaviors, customs, and constraints.
University of California, Berkeley
Principal Investigator: Will Dow
Poverty, Gender Inequities, and Sexual/Reproductive Health: An iIpact Evaluation of a Combined Economic and Psychosocial Intervention in Southern Tanzania
The project will consider 3,000 randomly selected young people between ages 15 and 30 from rural areas of southern Tanzania (Kilombero/Ulandga district). The study will randomly assign participants to one of four experimental arms: a CCT of $45 and psychosocial counseling, a CCT of $30 and psychosocial counseling, only psychosocial counseling, and a control group. All participants in the study will be tested for STIs at baseline, four, eight, 12, and 24 months. In the process, it would examine linkages between gender-based power and increased control in sexual and reproductive health attributable to the interventions on economic outcomes, including earnings, patterns of household consumption, and levels of savings and investment. The researchers propose to test the hypothesis that using cash as a primary incentive to reduce risky sexual behavior, coupled with counseling, will result in enhanced economic well-being in the lives of study participants, in addition to improved sexual/reproductive health outcomes.
University of Michigan and the University of Cape Town
Principal Investigators: David Lam and Murray Leibbrandt
Fertility, Intergenerational Transfers, and Economic Development in South Africa
In this proposed project the investigators will exploit the Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS), a longitudinal survey of 4,800 14-22 year-olds and their families residing in Cape Town first interviewed in 2002 and reinterviewed a total of four times, the last being in 2006. The CAPS is a rich, ongoing data collection effort on detailed sex/pregnancy history and many outcomes, focusing on human capital. The data set will be used to assess the consequences of teen childbearing on longer-term economic outcomes for the teens (schooling and earnings) and their children (schooling, birthweight, health), and the role played by both private and public support systems in mediating these effects. South Africa has a public program providing direct financial assistance to poor mothers (Child Support Grant) and a generous program providing financial support to the elderly. This latter program provides indirect financial support to poor mothers, when parents or the grandparents who are drawing a state pension provide transfers to the mother, as well nonfinancial support for teen mothers when poor mothers coreside with grandparents. There is great interest in tracing the impacts of this. The project will also exploit the first wave of the National Income Dynamics Study and other data sets to assess to what extent what the CAPS data say about Cape Town generalizes to all of South Africa.
The 2007 recipients of grants under the Hewlett/PRB U.S. Teams of Research Excellence program were:
Duke University
Principal Investigators: Duncan Thomas and Elizabeth Frankenberg
Reproductive Health, Empowerment of Women and Economic Prosperity
Working with microlevel data from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Africa, this team plans to measure the effects of investments in family planning and reproductive health services on a broad array of indicators of the health, well-being, and economic prosperity of women, children, and their families. Among other outcomes, they will examine the effects of family planning services on savings and asset accumulation and, in turn, the effects of savings on second-generation fertility choices. They will also examine how women and men allocate resources within the family in ways that may affect health and wealth. Finally, in order to shed light on how these differences might be interpreted, they will use their multiple study settings to develop a better understanding of how attitudes towards risk and intertemporal preferences vary with gender, age, education, and others affect people's risk behavior. This research will be conducted in collaboration with colleagues from Mexico, Indonesia, South Africa, and United States.
Brown University, Population Studies and Training Center
Principal Investigators: Andrew Foster and David Weil
The Effects of Health and Demographic Change on Economic Growth: Integrating Micro and Macro Perspectives:
Using data from India and Bangladesh, this team will integrate several ongoing projects to increase the understanding of how investments in health and fertility decline contribute to economic growth. The research explores both macroeconomic and microeconomic effects of population change and how they are linked. The projects focus on the effects of changes in health and demographic structure on the level of economic activity, the role of demographic change in the sustainable use of environmental resources, and the long-term effects of early child health and nutrition on adult productivity.