Browsing by Author "Celhay, Pablo A."

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Can Small Incentives Have Large Payoffs? Health Impacts of a Cash Transfer Program in Bolivia
    (UNIV CHICAGO PRESS, 2021) Celhay, Pablo A.; Johannsen, Julia; Martinez, Sebastian; Vidal, Cecilia
    We study the effects of a conditional cash transfer for health care utilization, equivalent to 1% of monthly household consumption, on child survival in Bolivia. Using census data and an instrument for program take-up, we show that the intervention increased the survival rates of birth cohorts exposed to the program by 3.8% to 14.7%. A pathways analysis shows higher rates of early antenatal care and skilled birth attendance for women and a higher number of growth monitoring checkups and immunization for children. The intervention is highly cost-effective, at $746 per disability-adjusted life year averted, making the program's design a promising policy alternative.
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    Property rights and market behavior in the low-income housing sector: Evidence from Chile
    (WILEY, 2022) Gil, Diego; Celhay, Pablo A.
    Recent decades have seen a strong commitment in development theory and practice toward the idea of promoting homeownership among low-income families, partly based on the idea that property formalization constitutes an important vehicle for social mobility and economic development. However, the empirical evidence on this theory is not conclusive. This paper aims to explore this idea using evidence from Chile, a country that has shown high success in moving low-income families from the informal to the formal housing sector. The data for the analysis comes from a comprehensive survey conducted in 2008 with a representative sample of two groups of low-income households in Santiago: The first group living in an irregular settlement and the second living in subsidized formal housing. Through the use of statistical methods that allow comparison of these samples (matching strategies), we find that market behavior among both groups are not considerably different. The analysis shows that there are no statistically significant differences between the two groups with respect to savings and investments in their homes. The only relevant difference we find is that individuals living in formal housing have more access to loans from commercial stores relative to informal dwellers. We argue that the type of geographical relocation to formal housing may affect the market behavior of low-income owners more than tenure security, in a direction that does not necessary benefit their socioeconomic situation.
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    When a strike strikes twice: Massive student mobilizations and teenage pregnancy in Chile
    (2024) Celhay, Pablo A.; Depetris-Chauvin, Emilio; Riquelme, Cristina
    This paper empirically studies the impact of massive and sudden school closures following the 2011 nationwide student strike in Chile on teenage pregnancy. We observe an average increase of 2.7% in teenage pregnancies in response to temporary high school shutdowns, equal to 1.9 additional pregnancies per lost school day. The effect diminishes after three quarters since the strike's onset. The effects are predominantly driven by first-time mothers aligned with high-school absenteeism periods and are unrelated to the typical seasonality of teenage fertility or pregnancies in other age groups. Additionally, we document that the strike had a larger disruptive role by affecting students' educational trajectories, evidenced by a persistent increase in dropout rates and a reduction in college admission test take-up for both female and male students.