Kohler, Hans-Peter

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  • Publication
    Social Science Methods for Twins Data: Integrating Causality, Endowments and Heritability
    (2010-01-01) Kohler, Hans-Peter; Behrman, Jere R; Schnittker, Jason
    Twins have been extensively used in both economic and behavioral genetics to investigate the role of genetic endowments on a broad range of social, demographic and economic outcomes. However, the focus in these two literatures has been distinct: the economic literature has been primarily concerned with the need to control for unobserved endowments—including as an im¬portant subset, genetic endowments—in analyses that attempt to establish the impact of one vari¬able, often schooling, on a variety of economic, demographic and health outcomes. Behavioral genetic analyses have mostly been concerned with decomposing the variation in the outcomes of interest into genetic, shared environmental and non-shared environmental components, with recent multivariate analyses investigating the contributions of genes and the environment to the correlation and causation between variables. Despite the fact that twins studies and the recogni¬tion of the role of endowments are central to both of these literatures, they have mostly evolved independently. In this paper we develop formally the relationship between the economic and behavioral genetic approaches to the analyses of twins, and we develop an integrative approach that combines the identification of causal effects, which dominates the economic literature, with the decomposition of variances and covariances into genetic and environmental factors that is the primary goal of behavioral genetic approaches. We apply this new integrative approach to an illustrative investigation of the impact of schooling on several demographic outcomes such as fertility and nuptiality and health.
  • Publication
    Phase 1 Project Report. Social Networks and Norms: Sanitation in Bihar and Tamil Nadu, India
    (2017-12-31) Bicchieri, Cristina; Ashraf, Sania; Das, Upasak; Kohler, Hans-Peter; Kuang, Jinyi; McNally, Peter; Shpenev, Alexey; Thulin, Erik
  • Publication
    Phase 2 Project Report. Social Networks and Norms: Sanitation in Bihar and Tamil Nadu, India
    (2018-01-01) BICCHIERI, Cristina; Ashraf, Sania; Das, Upasak; Delea, Maryann; Kohler, Hans-Peter; Kuang, Jinyi; McNally, Peter; Shpenev, Alexey; Thulin, Erik
  • Publication
    The Behavioral Economics of Altruism, Reciprocity, and Transfers within Families and Rural Communities: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa
    (2007-02-01) Chao, Li-wei; Kohler, Hans-Peter
    Transfers between strangers, neighbors, families, and spouses were examined using Triple Dictator Games (TDG, involving only givings) and Trust Games (TG, involving both givings and reciprocations) among 240 participants from 60 families in 20 villages in rural Malawi. In TDG, more was sent by those who were older, male, in better physical health, financially poorer, or frequent lenders of personal items, but less was sent to neighbors by participants with higher HIV felt stigma. In TG, higher transfers were associated with the expected amount of reciprocation, amount sent in TDG, and prior lending behavior; participants with high HIV stigmatization attitudes gave less, especially to their own families and spouses. Higher reciprocation in TG was associated with better mental health. Those with HIV stigmatization attitudes reciprocated differently, depending on whether their game-partner was the neighbor, family, or spouse. Social distance, physical and mental health, and HIV-stigma were predictors of transfers behavior.
  • Publication
    Up, Down and Reciprocal: The Dynamics of Intergenerational Transfers, Family Structure and Health in a Low-Income Context
    (2017-06-07) Payne, Collin F.; Pesando, Luca Maria; Kohler, Hans-Peter
    In the absence of well-functioning public transfer systems and safety nets, the family acts as the key provider of income and support through the intergenerational redistribution of resources. In this paper we use micro-level longitudinal data and a mix of methodologies to document the lifecycle patterns of financial transfers in a rural, sub-Saharan African population. Underneath a well-established age-pattern of intergenerational transfers in which transfer patterns change according to broad stages of the economic life cycle, our analyses document significant heterogeneity and fluidity: Intergenerational transfers are variable and reverse their direction, with individuals moving between the provider and recipient states repeatedly across their life course and within each major stage of the life-cycle. Contrary to common perceptions about family transfers ameliorating short-term shocks, transfers in our analyses are driven primarily by demographic factors such as changes in health, household size, and household composition, rather than short-term events. Overall our analyses suggest that the role of transfers in this rural sub-Saharan context is significantly more complex than suggested by theories and evidence on aggregate transfer patterns, and at the micro-level, intergenerational transfers encapsulate multiple functions ranging from direct exchange to old-age support in the absence of a public pension system.
  • Publication
    Resilience, Accelerated Aging and Persistently Poor Health: Diverse Trajectories of Health among the Global Poor
    (2022-08-01) Kohler, Iliana V; Hoang, Cung Truong; Amin, Vikesh; Behrman, Jere R; Kohler, Hans-Peter
    Objectives: This study is among the first to document lifecourse trajectories of physical and mental health across adult and older ages (20-70 years) for a poor sub-Saharan African population having faced frequent and sustained adversities. Methods: The 2006-19 waves of the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH) were analyzed using group-based trajectory models (GBTM) to identify trajectories of heath (SF12 mental/physical health and BMI) across the lifecourse. Predictors of trajectory membership were estimated using fractional multinomial logits. Results: Analyses identified three distinct trajectories: (1) good initial mental/physical health that persisted throughout the lifecourse ("resilient aging"); (2) good initial mental and physical health that deteriorated with age ("accelerated aging"); or (3) poor initial mental and physical health with possibly further declines over the lifecourse ("aging with persistently poor health"). Predictors of trajectory group membership included gender, childhood poverty, and schooling. Discussion: Despite lifecourses being characterized by poverty and frequent adversities in this poor population, our analyses identified a sizable group (30%) of resilient individuals who experienced successful aging with good initial health that persisted across the lifecourse and into old age. Accelerated aging was the most common trajectory for SF12 physical and mental health in this poor population, while for BMI, persistently poor health was most common. Men were more likely to enjoy resilient aging than women in terms of physical/mental health, contrary to previous findings from high-income contexts. Other predictors of trajectory membership sometimes confirmed, and sometimes contradicted, hypotheses derived from high-income country studies.
  • Publication
    Mental Health, Schooling Attainment and Polygenic Scores: Are There Significant Gene-Environment Associations?
    (2020-02-04) Amin, Vikesh; Behrman, Jere R.; Fletcher, Jason M.; Flores, Carlos A.; Flores-Lagunes, Alfonso; Kohler, Hans-Peter
    We estimate associations between a polygenic score (PGS) for depressive symptoms, schooling attainment and genetic-environmental (GxE) associations with depressive symptoms and depression for 29 years old in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and 53 years old in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS). We find some suggestive evidence that the association of the PGS with mental health is lower for more-schooled older individuals in the WLS, but no evidence in Add Health. Quantile regression estimates also show that in the WLS the GxE associations are statistically significant only in the upper parts of the conditional depressive symptoms score distribution. We assess the robustness of the OLS results to possible omitted variable bias by estimating sibling fixed-effect regressions. The sibling fixed-effect results must be qualified, in part due to low statistical power. However, they show that college education is associated with fewer depressive symptoms in both datasets.
  • Publication
    Subjective Expectations in the Context of HIV/AIDS in Malawi
    (2007-01-01) Delavande, Adelin; Kohler, Hans-Peter
    In this paper we present a newly-developed interactive elicitation methodology to collect probabilistic expectations in a developing country context with low levels of literacy and numeracy, and we evaluate the feasibility and success of this method for a wide range of outcomes in rural Malawi. We find that respondent’s answers about subjective expectations respect basic properties of probabilities, and vary meaningfully with observable characteristics and past experience. From a substantive point of view, the elicited expectations indicate that individuals are generally aware of differential risks. For example, individuals with less income and less land feel rightly at more risk of financial distress than people with higher SES, or people who are divorced or widow feel rightly at more risk of being infected with HIV than currently married individuals. While many expectations—including also the probability of being currently infected with HIV—are well-calibrated compared to actual probabilities, mortality expectations are substantially over-estimated compared to lifetable estimates. This overestimation may lead individuals to underestimate the benefits of adopting HIV risk-reduction strategies. The skewed distribution of expectations about condom use also suggests that a small group of innovators are the forerunners in the adoption of condoms within marriage for HIV prevention.
  • Publication
    Mortality Risk Information, Survival Expectations and Sexual Behaviors
    (2020-01-29) Ciancio, Alberto; Delavande, Adeline; Kohler, Hans-Peter; Kohler, Iliana V.
    Individuals in low-income settings are often overly pessimistic about their own survival, suggesting that better knowledge about survival risks might encourage investments in health. This paper provides evidence from a randomized experiment that provided mature adults aged 45+ in Malawi with information about mortality risks. Treated individuals are less likely to engage in risky sexual practices one year after the intervention, and they increase other forward-looking behaviors such as investments in agriculture. Expectations of HIV+ people living longer, which makes the pool of potential partners riskier, are a primary driver of reduced sexual risk taking in response to the intervention.
  • Publication
    Family Change and Variation Through the Lens of Family Configurations in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
    (2021-09-27) Castro Torres, Andrés Felipe; Pesando, Luca Maria; Kohler, Hans-Peter; Furstenberg, Frank F.
    Using 254 Demographic and Health Surveys from 75 low- and middle-income countries, this study shows how the joint examination of family characteristics across rural and urban areas provides new insights for understanding global family change. We operationalize this approach by building family configurations: a set of interrelated features that describe different patterns of family formation and structure. These features include partnership (marriage/unions) regimes and their stability, gender relations, household composition, and reproduction. Factorial and clustering techniques allow us to summarize these family features into three factorial axes and six discrete family configurations. We provide an in-depth description of these configurations, their spatial distribution, and their changes over time. Global family change is uneven because it emerges from complex interplays between the relative steadiness of longstanding arrangements for forming families and organizing gender relations, and the rapidly changing dynamics observed in the realms of fertility, contraception, and timing of family formation.