Thèse en cours : Development Economics and Gender in sub-Saharan Africa

Université Paris Dauphine

Sous la direction de Elise Huillery et Olivia Bertelli  

Date d’inscription : Octobre 2020

My thesis is devoted to the investigation of three different aspects of the relationship between economic development and the condition of women at the individual level in Africa. In a first article, I focus first on the heterogeneous impact of local economic growth on maternal health with respect to individual and environmental characteristics, in order to test the « trickle-down » theory and verify that women, and especially the most vulnerable and far from economic activity, benefit from economic growth. I approximate local economic growth by nighttime lights captured by satellites. I also study the channels through which is felt the relationship between luminosity and health outcomes, by disentangling the demand side from the supply side of light. In a second article, I use geographic and time inequalities in the extension of the mobile money network to study the impact of mobile money on women’s decision-making power, as well as consequences in terms of children’s health and educational outcomes. In a third article, I focus on the social preference for boys, its potential malleability over a woman’s lifetime, and its roots. I analyze opinions and attitudes relating to gender inequalities based on a large panel of young women in two African countries, study the malleability of these attitudes and perceptions by exploiting an exogenous shock which is the sex of the first child, and draw conclusions on the existence of a preference for boys in West Africa and its roots.