The UK Universal Credit (UC) welfare reform simplified the benefits system whilst strongly incentivising a return to sustainable employment. Exploiting a staggered roll-out, we estimate the differential effect of entering unemployment under UC versus the former system on mental health. Groups with fewer insurance possibilities - single adults and lone parents - experience a mental health deterioration of 8.4-13.9% sd.For couples, UC partially or fully mitigates mental health consequences of unemployment.

We conducted a RCT to test whether updating nutrition information sets of parents along with nudges reduces excess body fat among primary schoolchildren in urban Vietnam. Parents of overweight or obese children were randomly offered a nutrition consultation that led to goal setting with soft commitment, BMI-for-age report card, and weight scale. After 6 months, the intervention reduced body fat, waist circumference, and the likelihood of being overweight or obese, which are partly explained by improvements in diets and diet-related parental perceptions.

This study aims to examine the determinants of maternal healthcare choice for children under five years old with pneumonia in Vietnam. The choices include taking their children to the hospitals, staying at home and using self-medication, or choosing traditional method by consulting a traditionalist or a spiritualist. We use the multinomial logit model to study a collection of 215 observations from onsite surveys, including different groups of ethnic minorities.

This paper investigates the impact of health insurance on families' financial service choices in Vietnam using TVSEP data from three waves in 2013, 2016, and 2017. The endogeneity is handled via a recursive multivariate probit model. The findings indicate that while health insurance has no effect on private health insurance, it has a positive effect on savings and investments and a negative effect on credit choice. The multivariate probit model's results are robust to both the instrumental variable two-stage least squares model and the bivariate probit model.

Addressing gender inequality in economic opportunities in developing countries has the potential to improve the household’s nutrition. This study by EfD researcher Nikita Sangwan and Shalander Kumar (ICRISAT) informs policies intended to improve food security and health outcomes of the need to enhance female labor force participation (FLFP).