Possible topic#1 - Health, Nutrition and Rural Household Welfare

Some motivations for looking at the link between health, nutrition and the welfare of rural households:

• Health and nutrition are important aspects of basic needs, while one of the main goals of economic development is to expand the capacity to obtain basic needs, especially for the poor people.
• The productivity of low-income people is strongly correlated with improved health and nutrition.
• Improving health and nutrition are important means in itself, as well as an instrument for improving welfare.

Behrman and Deolalikar in Handbook of Development Economics (1988) provided a good framework to start with. It is a modified household-farm decision making model, which was based on earlier works by Barnum and Squire (1979) and Singh, Squire and Strauss (1986).

Based on this, I intend to look at three specific issues:

1. Household demand function and income elasticity of nutrient (calorie).
2. Estimating the return of improved nutrient intake (calorie) and health status (Body Mass Index, anthropometric measures), evaluated in terms of: a) farm profit, b) individual wages, and c) output/productivity
3. Estimating the impact of healthy environment (clean water, improved sanitation) on children health status (as a proxy for human capital accumulation).