Eduard van der Merwe PhD Candidate in Economics
Rice University

Researchers and policymakers increasingly recognize the importance of cultural and traditional practices in shaping economic development outcomes. In this paper, I provide a detailed descriptive account of how ethnic characteristics may shape child poverty and undernutrition in Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi and Nigeria. I show that children's intrahousehold resource allocation and nutrition outcomes vary significantly across ethnic groups. Using a supervised machine learning technique, I identify six key ancestral ethnic characteristics that differentiate these groups and document how these traits correlate with child poverty and undernutrition. I demonstrate that differences in intrahousehold resource distribution (rather than differences in other socioeconomic traits) serve as an important mechanism underlying these ethnic patterns. This study provides descriptive evidence that effective policies to alleviate child poverty and undernutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa must be tailored to the specific cultural contexts of the populations they serve.

Recent global conflicts have amplified long-standing patterns of religion-related bias and discrimination in the U.S. The continuing war on Gaza has led to bias, hostility, and violence against both Muslims and Jews in the U.S. We present an overview of results from a new 1308-person national survey data collection gathered through NORC’s AmeriSpeak Panel with oversamples of Jews and Muslims. Our findings reveal important reversals, asymmetries, polarities, and solidarities in perceptions and experiences of bias among Jews and Muslims and experiences of and responses to the war among religious groups. Jews were the most likely group to report experiences of religious bias and hostility in the U.S. and the most likely to register fear about future bias, followed by Muslims, a reversal of patterns from earlier research. Jews were the most likely religious group to report experiencing an increase in religious bias or hostility after October 7, 2023. Americans reported warm feelings towards Jews, Muslims, Israelis, and Palestinians but cool feelings towards the Israeli government and Hamas, suggesting that across most religious groups, Americans demonstrate more sympathy towards religious identities when compared to national identities and political entities.

When God Stops Fighting explores which factors—both internally and externally—contribute to the downfall of some of the most violent religious movements. Juergensmeyer's work tries to understand how the "collapse of movements is perceived from the perspective of those who are engaged in them" (p. 118). This work aids our understanding in how some of the most violent wars can develop into a state of non-war which is the first step to aid civilians that are caught in the crossfire.

Erratic temperatures and precipitation influence nutrition, human capital investment, and living standards, particularly for children. This study investigates the effect of climate change (changes in the monthly maximum average near-surface temperature and total monthly precipitation) on children's health outcomes, particularly stunting and underweight, in Nigeria. We combine Living Standards Measurement Study - Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) data with high resolution gridded climate data. We find that the rise in temperature is associated with higher levels of stunting – even more so in rural areas. The paper's findings highlight the need for climate-friendly policies to mitigate the long-term effect of climate change on malnourishment. Without such policies, climate change could reverse years of progress in lowering children's malnutrition.

Understanding the causes and consequences of conflicts continues to be an important contribution to the economic development literature, particularly the mechanisms that can reduce civilian deaths. We contribute to understanding attacks on civilians and the spillover effects by analysing the impact of government religious preference on civilian deaths. Using panel data analysis for 113 countries for the period 1989 to 2015, we find that a higher government preference towards religion causes more civilian deaths for countries experiencing intrastate conflict. Furthermore, we analyse this effect by the different types of conflict and find that the results are driven by both state-based and non-state-based conflicts. Lastly, a regional analysis shows that the negative impact of a strong preference towards religion from the government is particularly notable for countries in Africa and Asia.