Facts and figures about UK taxes, benefits and public spending.
Income distribution, poverty and inequality.
Analysing government fiscal forecasts and tax and spending.
Analysis of the fiscal choices an independent Scotland would face.
Case studies that give a flavour of the areas where IFS research has an impact on society.
Reforming the tax system for the 21st century.
A peer-reviewed quarterly journal publishing articles by academics and practitioners.
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Funded by:
Inter-American Development Bank
Date started: 01 August 2003
In this project we study the determinants of child anthropometrics on a sample of poor Colombian
children living in small municipalities. We focus on the influence of household consumption, and
public infrastructure. We take into account the endogeneity of household consumption using two
different sets of instruments: household assets and municipality average wage. We find that household
consumption is an important determinant of child health. The importance of the effect is confirmed by
the two different sets of instruments. We find that using ordinary least squares would lead to conclude
that the importance of household consumption is much smaller than the instrumental variable
estimates suggest. The presence of a public hospital in the municipality positively influences child
health. The extent of the piped water network positively influences the health of children if their
parents have at least some education. The number of hours of growth and development check-ups is
also an important determinant of child health. We find that some of these results only show up once
squared and interaction terms have been included in the regression. Overall, our estimates suggest that both public and private investments are important to improve child health in poor environments.
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