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Browsing by Author "Tennekoon, Vidhura S."
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Item Adversity in Infancy and Childhood Cognitive Development: Evidence From Four Developing Countries(Frontiers, 2022-12-12) Manalew, W. Samuel; Tennekoon, Vidhura S.; Lee, Jusung; O'Connell, Bethesda; Quinn, Megan; Economics, School of Liberal ArtsObjectives: We investigated whether adverse experiences at age 1 (AE-1) affect the level of and change in cognition during childhood using harmonized data from four developing countries. Methods: Data included children born in 2001/2002 and were followed longitudinally in 2006/2007 and in 2009/2010 by Young Lives study in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. Childhood cognition was measured using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) at ages 5 (PPVT-5) and 8 (PPVT-8). We also examined the effect on a change in cognition between age 5–8 (PPVT-Change). The AE-1 scores were constructed using survey responses at age 1. The ordinary least squares regression was used for estimation. Results: We found that children with higher adversities as infants had lower cognition scores at ages 5 and 8. The change in cognition between the two ages was also generally smaller for those with severe adversities at infancy. The negative association between adversities and childhood cognition was strongest for India. Conclusion: The results provide policy relevant information for mitigation of undesirable consequences of early life adversities through timely interventions.Item Counting unreported abortions: A binomial-thinned zero-inflated Poisson model(2017-01) Tennekoon, Vidhura S.; Department of Economics, School of Liberal ArtsBackground: Self-reported counts of intentional abortions in demographic surveys are significantly lower than the actual counts. To estimate the extent of misreporting, previous research has required either a gold standard or a validation sample. However, in most cases, a gold standard or a validation sample is not available. Objective: Our main intention here is to show that a researcher has an alternative tool to estimate the extent of underreporting in a given dataset, particularly when neither a valid gold standard nor a validation sample is available. Methods: We adopt a binomial-thinned zero-inflated Poisson model and apply it to a sample dataset, the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), for which an alternative estimate of the average reporting rate (38%) is available. We show how this model could be used to estimate the reporting probabilities of intentional abortions by each individual in addition to the overall average reporting rate. Results: Our model estimates the average reporting rate in the NSFG during 2006‒2013 as 35.3% (SE 8.2%). Individual reporting probabilities vary significantly. Conclusions: Our estimate of the average reporting rate of the dataset used is qualitatively and statistically similar to the available alternative estimate.Item Dirty hands on troubled waters: Sanitation, access to water and child health in Ethiopia(Wiley, 2019-11) Manalew, Wondimu S.; Tennekoon, Vidhura S.; Economics, School of Liberal ArtsIn this paper, we investigate the impact of access to drinking water sources and sanitation facilities on the incidence of diarrheal diseases among children below 5 years of age in Ethiopia using the propensity score matching technique with a polychotomous treatment variable. We find that among the water sources traditionally considered as improved, only water piped into dwelling, yard or plot leads to a large percentage point reduction in diarrhea incidence. The other water sources, generally believed as clean, are not effective in reducing diarrhea even compared with some of the unimproved water sources. We also find that some unimproved water sources and sanitation facilities are less inferior than they are believed to be. These results suggest that the traditional way of categorizing different types of improved and unimproved water sources and sanitation facilities into a dichotomous variable, “improved” or “unimproved”, could be misleading as it masks the heterogeneous effects of the water sources and the sanitation facilities.Item The equivalence of three latent class models and ML estimators(Elsevier, 2016-04) Tennekoon, Vidhura S.; Department of Economics, School of Liberal ArtsThe purpose of this letter is to show the equivalence of three latent class models; the switching regression model with endogenous switching and a latent outcome (the binary Roy model), the probit model with a systematically misclassified dependent variable, and a trivariate probit model with partial observability. The probit model with measurement error is an enhanced version of existing models which allows for the potential correlation between error terms. Establishing this connection, we hope, will help a researcher working on one of these classes of estimators to benefit from the literature and software related to other families.Item Sri Lanka teeters on economic edge, from pandemic-fueled financial crisis and Ukraine war spillovers(The Conversation U.S, 2022-03-31) Tennekoon, Vidhura S.; Economics, School of Liberal ArtsItem The impact of IOM recommendations on gestational weight gain among US women: An analysis of birth records during 2011-2019(Public Library of Science, 2022-07-21) Tennekoon, Vidhura S.; Economics, School of Liberal ArtsThe prevailing guidelines of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of United States on gestational weight gain (GWG) are based on women's prepregnancy body mass index (BMI) categories. Previous research has shown that the guidelines issued in 1990 and revised in 2009 had no effect. We investigate the effectiveness of new guidelines issued in 2009 analyzing the records of all singleton births in the U.S. during 2011-2019 (34.0 million observations). We use the discontinuity in recommended guidelines at the threshold values of BMI categories in a regression discontinuity (RD) research design to investigate the effect of IOM guidelines on GWG. We also use an RD analysis in a difference in difference (DID) framework where we compare the effect on women who had any prenatal care to others who did not receive prenatal care. The naïve RD estimator predicts an effect in the expected direction at the threshold BMI values of 18.5 and 25.0 but not at 30.0. After the DID based correction, the RD analyses show that the GWG, measured in kg, drop at the BMI values of 18.5, 25.0 and 30.0 by 0.189 [CI: 0.341, 0.037], 0.085 [CI: 0.179, -0.009] and 0.200 [CI: 0.328, 0.072] respectively when the midpoint of the recommended range in kg drops by 1.5, 4.5 and 2.25. This implies a responsiveness of 12.6%, 1.9% and 8.9% respectively to changes in guidelines at these BMI values. The findings show that the national guidelines have induced some behavioral changes among US women during their pregnancy resulting in a change in GWG in the expected direction. However, the magnitude of the change has not been large compared to the expectations, implying that the existing mechanisms to implement these guidelines have not been sufficiently strong.Item What’s a bear market? An economist explains(The Conversation US, Inc., 2022-06-17) Tennekoon, Vidhura S.; Economics, School of Liberal Arts