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on Central and South America |
| By: | Amaya, Elard (University of Turin); Aparicio Fenoll, Ainoa (University of Turin); Mendolia, Silvia (University of Turin) |
| Abstract: | Among Latin American countries, Peru has one of the highest crime rates, with 9 out of 10 Peruvians reporting feeling unsafe walking the streets at night. This rooted-in-reality feeling of insecurity may harm citizens' mental health. We study the consequences of the Peruvian Safe Neighborhood program, which increased police patrolling in selected neighborhoods, on the mental health of residents. We exploit the program's staggered implementation and use data from the Demographic and Health Survey to precisely geolocate the respondents' residencies. Our results show that enhanced crime prevention reduced the incidence of mental health problems by 6 percentage points. In particular, the program reduced depression, tiredness, concentration problems, suicide intentions, and sense of failure by 3–4 percentage points. The evidence suggests that improvements in mental health are driven by tangible changes in health-related behaviors. Following the implementation of Safe Neighborhood, there is an increase in healthcare utilization. |
| Keywords: | crime prevention, mental health |
| JEL: | K42 I15 I31 |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17697 |
| By: | Ham, Andres; Vazquez, Emmanuel Jose; Yanez Pagans, Monica |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the effects of differential exposure to COVID-19 on educational outcomes in Guatemala. The government adopted a warning index (ranging from 0 to 10) to classify municipalities by infection rates in 2020, which was then used by the Ministry of Education in 2021 to establish a “stoplight” system for in-person instruction. Using administrative panel data for all students in Guatemala, the study employs a difference-in-differences strategy that leverages municipal differences over time in the warning index to estimate the effects of the pandemic on dropout, promotion, and school switching. The results show that municipalities with a higher warning index had significantly larger dropout, lower promotion rates, and a greater share of students switching from private to public schools. These effects were more pronounced during the first year of the pandemic. The findings show differential effects by the level of instruction, with greater losses for younger children in initial and primary education. The results are robust to specification choice, multiple hypothesis adjustments, and placebo experiments, suggesting that the pandemic has had heterogeneous consequences. |
| Date: | 2023–02–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10308 |
| By: | World Bank |
| Keywords: | Governance-E-Government Information and Communication Technologies-Digital Divide |
| Date: | 2024–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wboper:42017 |
| By: | Bandiera, Antonella (ITAM); , Rojas Daniel |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effectiveness of media literacy interventions in combating misinformation among in-transit migrants in Mexico and Colombia. We conducted experiments to study whether an established strategy for fighting misinformation works for this understudied yet particularly vulnerable population. We evaluate the effect of digital media literacy tips on migrants' ability to identify false information and their intentions to share migration-related content. We find that these interventions can effectively decrease migrants' intentions to share misleading migration-related information, with a significantly larger reduction observed for false content than accurate information. We also find that prompting participants to think about accuracy can unintentionally obscure sharing intent by acting as a nudge. Additionally, the interventions decreased trust in social media as an information source while maintaining trust in official sources. The findings suggest that incorporating digital literacy tips into official websites could be a cost-effective strategy to reduce misinformation circulation among migrant populations. |
| Date: | 2024–12–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:md42a_v1 |