This thesis is formed of three separate essays. The essays are empirical in nature and use
the Kagera Health and Development Survey from Tanzania. The survey spans a 19-year
period offering a unique opportunity to study many long-run dynamic processes of
development in rural Africa.
In the first essay, a version of which was co-authored with Joachim De Weerdt, we use
these data to shed light on how mass internal migration changes the nature of informal
risk-sharing. By quantifying how shocks and consumption co-move across linked
households, our analysis shows that migrants unilaterally insure their extended family
members who remain at home. This finding contradicts risk-sharing models based on
reciprocity, but is consistent with assistance driven by social norms. Migrants sacrifice
three to five per cent of their consumption growth to provide this insurance, which seems
too trivial to have a stifling effect on their growth through migration.
The second essay studies the role of exogenous income shocks on long-term migration
decisions. The results reveal that temperature shocks cause large fluctuations in
household consumption and inhibit long-term migration among men. These findings
suggest that liquidity constraints are binding and prevent potential migrants from tapping
into the opportunities brought about by internal migration.
The final essay focuses on child nutrition and examines whether under-nourished children
are able to recover the height losses later in life. The essay questions the methods used in
the existing empirical literature and challenges the conventional view that recovery is
nearly impossible after five years of age. The empirical part of the essay documents how
puberty offers an opportunity window for recovery in the case of children in Kagera.