Recent studies demonstrate procyclical mortality in wealthy countries, but there are reasons to expect a countercyclical relationship in developing nations. We investigate how child survival in Colombia responds to fluctuations in world Arabica coffee prices – and document starkly procyclical child deaths. In studying this result’s behavioral underpinnings, we highlight that: (1) The leading determinants of child health are inexpensive but require considerable time, and (2) As the value of time declines with falling coffee prices, so does the relative price of health. We find a variety of direct evidence consistent with the primacy of time in child health production.

Longer lives and fertility far below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman are leading to rapid population aging in many countries. Many observers are concerned that aging will adversely affect public finances and standards of living. Analysis of newly available National Transfer Accounts data for 40 countries shows that fertility well above replacement would typically be most beneficial for government budgets. However, fertility near replacement would be most beneficial for standards of living when the analysis includes the effects of age structure on families as well as governments. And fertility below replacement would maximize per capita consumption when the cost of providing capital for a growing labor force is taken into account. While low fertility will indeed challenge government programs and very low fertility undermines living standards, we find that moderately low fertility and population decline favor the broader material standard of living

BACKGROUNDEstimating the long-term effects of adolescent motherhood is challenging for all developing countries, including Colombia, where this rate has been steadily increasing for 24 years, despite the reduction in the overall fertility rate. We propose a replicable methodology by applying a pseudo panel that evaluates the consequences of adolescent motherhood on outcomes previously neglected in the literature, such as job quality, marriage instability, partner's job class, presence of physical abuse by current partner, and children's health. OBJECTIVETo examine how adolescent mothers compare with non-adolescent mothers in outcomes not previously studied, such as job quality, marriage instability, partner's job class, if respondent has been physically abused by current partner, and health outcomes for their children. METHODSWe built a pseudo panel using four Demographic and Health Surveys (1995-2010) and compared the effects of older adolescent childbearing (ages 18-19) with those of women who postponed motherhood for just a couple of years (ages 20-21), exploiting the natural difference between adolescents and young adults who become mothers. RESULTSThe results revealed younger mothers as well as their partners hold lower-class jobs, suffer higher rates of domestic violence at the hands of their partners, and have a higher share of deceased children.

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Colombia, like many developing nations, does not have a strong health system able to respond to a pandemic of the magnitude of Covid-19. There is an increasing need to create a model that allows particular clinics and hospitals to estimate the number of patients that require Intensive Care Units-ICU care (critical), and the number of patients that require hospital care (severe), but not ICU care, in order to manage their limited resources. This paper presents a prediction of the total number of ICU and regular beds that will be needed in Bogotá, Colombia, during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use an SEIR model that includes three different categories of infection: those who can stay at home, those who need regular hospital beds, and those who need ICU treatment. The model allows for a time varying transmission rate which we use to incorporate the measures introduced by the government over the period of one semester. The model predicts that by mid November 2020, the city will need 1362 ICU beds and more than 9000 regular hospital beds. The number of active cases will be 67,866 by then and the death toll will reach 13,268 people by the end of December. We provide a Shiny app available at https://claudia-rivera-rodriguez.shinyapps.io/shinyappcovidclinic/ . The original values in the app reproduce the results of this paper, but the parameters and starting values can be changed according to the user's needs. COVID-19 has posed too many challenges to health systems around the globe. This model is a useful tool for cities, hospitals and clinics in Colombia that need to be prepared for the excess demand of services that a pandemic like this one generates. Unfortunately, the model predicts that by mid-November the projected capacity of the system in Bogotá will not be enough. We expect the lockdown rules to be strengthened in future days, so the death toll will not be as bad as predicted by this model.