Social interventions, health and wellbeing: The long-term and intergenerational effects of a school construction program

Abstract

We analyze the long-run and intergenerational effects of a large-scale school building project (INPRES) that took place in Indonesia between 1974 and 1979. Specifically, we link the geographic rollout of INPRES to longitudinal data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey covering two generations. We find that individuals exposed to the program have better health later in life along multiple measures. We also find that the children of those exposed experience improved health and educational outcomes and that these effects are generally stronger for maternal exposure than paternal exposure. We find some evidence that household resources, neighborhood quality, and assortative mating may explain a portion of our results. Our findings highlight the importance of considering the long-run and multigenerational benefits when evaluating the costs and benefits of social interventions in a middle-income country.

Here Comes the Rain Again: Productivity Shocks, Educational Investments, and Child Work

“…In the Indian context,Banerji, Berry and Shotland (2017) find that improvement in maternal education enhanced children's learning outcomes. Similarly, Sunder (2020) andMazumder, Rosales and Triyana (2019) find that mothers who benefitted from a school construction program were able to transfer human capital gains to their children in the form of higher test scores in India and Indonesia, respectively. Andrabi, Das and Khwaja (2012) find that mothers with some education invested more time in their children's education.…”