Study Overview
We investigate the impact of a large-scale Mexican program to replace dirt floors with cement floors on child health and adult happiness. We find that replacing dirt floors with cement significantly improves the health of young children measured by decreases in the incidence of parasitic infestations, diarrhea, and the prevalence of anemia, and an improvement in children’s cognitive development. Additionally, we find significant improvements in adult welfare measured by increased satisfaction with their housing and quality of life, as well as by lower scores on depression and perceived stress scales.
Study Results
In this paper, we show that Piso Firme improves child health and cognitive development, mainly by reducing the incidence of intestinal parasites that are not treatable with albendazole or other common deworming drugs employed in developing countries. We also show that Piso Firme improves adult welfare as measured by mental health and satisfaction with housing. Our results have a number of important policy implications. First, housing improvement appears to be an important component of anti-poverty interventions, and our results show that major improvements in child health and cognitive development can be achieved by this particular kind of interventions. Second, replacing dirt floors with cement floors appears to be, in this case, a cost-effective policy for improving child cognitive development. Third, de-worming drugs such as Albendazole are only partial substitutes for cement floors.
Intervention: Replacing dirt floors with cement floors (Piso Firme)