Kenneth Harttgen
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 167174 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Kenneth Harttgen |
| NOMBRES | Kenneth |
| APELLIDO | Harttgen |
| FIRMA | HARTTGEN K |
| AFILIACIONES | ETH Zurich |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8499-5281 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 27 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 197 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 27 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2008 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
Large-scale slum mapping in sub-Saharan Africa's major cities
Around half of sub-Saharan Africa's urban population lives in slums, yet data on the spatiotemporal development of slums remains scarce, impeding policies to alleviate urban poverty and inequality. We propose a solution to this problem by applying deep learning to open-access satellite imagery to map slums in 529 major cities across sub-Saharan Africa and track their spatiotemporal development. Our model produced 10m resolution ‘slum probability …
Self-supervised learning unveils urban change from street-level images
Cities around the world are grappling with multiple interconnected challenges, including population growth, shortage of affordable and decent housing, and the need for neighborhood improvements. Despite its critical importance for policy, our ability to effectively monitor and track urban change remains limited. Deep learning-based computer vision methods applied to street-level images have been successful in the measurement of socioeconomic and …
Unpacking the impact of Covid-19 on child immunization
Our results indicate that the negative effect on child immunization was less severe and shorter than predicted by experts. Fear of COVID-19 and delayed vaccination campaigns had a substantial impact on childhood immunization while rising COVID-19 cases and moderate social distancing regulations did not seem to affect immunization rates
The Fertility Transition in Sub-Saharan Africa
Despite recent economic growth and reductions in child mortality in many African countries, the region has experienced a slow fertility transition. In this study, we explore whether the slow structural economic change on the continent can explain this discrepancy. We construct a unique panel dataset combining Demographic and Health Surveys and nighttime light intensity data (an indicator of industrialization) from 57 countries at the subnational …
Joint distribution of child mortality and wealth across 30 sub-Saharan African countries over 2000-2019
Background: While reductions in child mortality have been observed across sub-Saharan African countries in the last 30 years, narrowing the gaps in under-five mortality across socioeconomic groups also requires an understanding of the multiple associations between health and welfare and socioeconomic drivers. We examined the probability density distributions in under-five mortality within countries and joint pathways of under-five mortality and w…
Slow-downs of fertility decline
The phenomenon of fertility stalls in Africa has recently received much attention in the literature yet hasn't lead to clear-cut conclusions
Modelling Under-Five Mortality through Multilevel Structured Additive Regression with Varying Coefficients for Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa
Despite improvements in global child health during the last three decades, under-five mortality rates remain significantly high in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Both regions did not achieve the MDG target of reducing under-five mortality rates by two thirds by 2015. The underlying causes of under-five mortality differ significantly between countries and between regions, which highlights the need to expand our understanding of the determinants of c…
Individual and social predictors of smoking and obesity
This is a longitudinal study of changes in smoking behaviour as well as becoming overweight/obese (OW/OB) and the strength of their association with personal factors such as self-control, mental health, and socioeconomic status (SES) versus their connection with the behaviour of other household members. Furthermore, we investigate that in terms of roles within a household, who is more vulnerable towards the behaviour of others. We used a hybrid m…
Modelling children's anthropometric status using Bayesian distributional regression merging socio-economic and remote sensed data from South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa
A history of insufficient nutritional intake is reflected by low anthropometric measures and can lead to growth failures, limited mental development, poor health outcomes and a higher risk of dying. Children below five years are among those most vulnerable and, while improvements in the share of children affected by insufficient nutritional intake has been observed, both sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have a disproportionately high share of gr…
Agricultural trade policies and child nutrition in low- and middle-income countries
BACKGROUND: There has been growing interest in understanding the role of agricultural trade policies in diet and nutrition. This cross-country study examines associations between government policies on agricultural trade prices and child nutrition outcomes, particularly undernutrition. METHODS: This study links panel data on government distortions to agricultural incentives to data from 212,258 children aged 6 to 35 months participating in Demogr…
Selective mortality and the anthropometric status of children in low- and middle-income countries
Measuring Socioeconomic Inequalities With Predicted Absolute Incomes Rather Than Wealth Quintiles
Objectives. To compare the predictive power of synthetic absolute income measures with that of asset-based wealth quintiles in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) using child stunting as an outcome. Methods. We pooled data from 239 nationally representative household surveys from LMICs and computed absolute incomes in US dollars based on households’ asset rank as well as data on national consumption and inequality levels. We used multivariab…
The HIV Epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa is Aging
Desired Fertility and Number of Children Born Across Time and Space
Economists have often argued that high fertility rates are mainly driven by women’s demand for children (and not by family planning efforts) with low levels of unwanted fertility across countries (and hence with little room for family planning efforts to reduce population growth). We study the relationship between wanted fertility and number of children born in a panel of 200 country-years controlling for country fixed effects and global time tre…
Analyzing nutritional impacts of price and income related shocks in Malawi
A Reversal in the Relationship of Human Development With Fertility
Myrskylä et al. (2009) found that the relationship between the human development index (HDI) and the total fertility rate (TFR) reverses from negative (i.e., increases in HDI are associated with decreases in TFR) to positive (i.e., increases in HDI are associated with increases in TFR) at an HDI level of 0.86. In this article, we show that the reversal in the HDI-TFR relationship is robust to neither the UNDP’s recent revision in the HDI calculat…
Do Fragile Countries Experience Worse MDG Progress
While it is regularly stated that development progress in so-called fragile states is lagging behind, only very limited empirical analysis exists that investigates to what extent the levels and trends in achievements in MDG indicators differ between fragile and other developing countries, and between different definitions of fragile states. We analyse levels of MDG indicators and progress towards achieving the MDGs between 1990 and 2008 of fragil…
Economic Growth and Child Undernutrition in sub-Saharan Africa
Despite recent improvements in economic performance, undernutrition rates in sub-Saharan Africa appear to have improved much less and rather inconsistently across the continent. We examine to what extent there is an empirical linkage between income growth and reductions of child undernutrition in Africa. We pool all DHS surveys for African countries, control for other correlates of undernutrition, and add country-level GDP per capita. We find tha…
Deadly Cities? Spatial Inequalities in Mortality in sub-Saharan Africa
We investigate whether sub-Saharan African countries are affected by an "urban mortality penalty" repeating the history of industrialized countries during the nineteenth century. We analyze Demographic and Health Surveys from several sub-Saharan African countries for differences in child and adult mortality between rural and urban areas. For the first decade of the 2000s, our findings indicate that child mortality is higher in rural than in urban…
A Household-Based Human Development Index
The history and impact of social security in South Africa
This paper examines the history and impact of the rapidly expanding social protection system in South Africa. We document the dominance of cash transfer-based assistance programmes compared to social insurance. There is a clear racial pattern of social protection coverage, with Africans benefitting largely from social assistance and whites being disproportionately covered by social insurance. We also find that the expanded social assistance has a…
A Human Development Index by Internal Migrational Status
Domestic migration constitutes the largest flow of people in developing countries and is among the most important opportunities for people to improve their human development. We calculate the Human Development Index by internal migrational status to assess the differences between the levels of human development of internal migrants compared with non-migrants. An empirical illustration for a sample of 16 low-income countries shows that, overall, i…
Inequality in Human Development
One of the most frequent critiques of the HDI is that is does not take into account inequality within countries in its three dimensions. In this paper, we apply a simply approach to compute the three components and the overall HDI for quintiles of the income distribution. This allows a comparison of the level in human development of the poor with the level of the non-poor within countries, but also across countries. This is an application of the …
Estimating Households Vulnerability to Idiosyncratic and Covariate Shocks
Empirical Analysis of Determinants, Distribution and Dynamics of Poverty
In recent years, the multidimensionality of poverty has been widely accepted and applied in the empirical analysis of poverty (see e.g.
Estimating Households Vulnerability to Idiosyncratic and Covariate Shocks
Deadly Cities? Spatial Inequalities in Mortality in sub-Saharan Africa
We investigate whether sub-Saharan African countries are affected by an "urban mortality penalty" repeating the history of industrialized countries during the nineteenth century. We analyze Demographic and Health Surveys from several sub-Saharan African countries for differences in child and adult mortality between rural and urban areas. For the first decade of the 2000s, our findings indicate that child mortality is higher in rural than in urban…
Desired Fertility and Number of Children Born Across Time and Space
Economists have often argued that high fertility rates are mainly driven by women’s demand for children (and not by family planning efforts) with low levels of unwanted fertility across countries (and hence with little room for family planning efforts to reduce population growth). We study the relationship between wanted fertility and number of children born in a panel of 200 country-years controlling for country fixed effects and global time tre…
A Human Development Index by Income Groups
A Household-Based Human Development Index
Inequality in Human Development
One of the most frequent critiques of the HDI is that is does not take into account inequality within countries in its three dimensions. In this paper, we apply a simply approach to compute the three components and the overall HDI for quintiles of the income distribution. This allows a comparison of the level in human development of the poor with the level of the non-poor within countries, but also across countries. This is an application of the …
Measuring Pro-Poor Growth in Non-Income Dimensions
Economic Growth and Child Undernutrition in sub-Saharan Africa
Despite recent improvements in economic performance, undernutrition rates in sub-Saharan Africa appear to have improved much less and rather inconsistently across the continent. We examine to what extent there is an empirical linkage between income growth and reductions of child undernutrition in Africa. We pool all DHS surveys for African countries, control for other correlates of undernutrition, and add country-level GDP per capita. We find tha…
A Reversal in the Relationship of Human Development With Fertility
Myrskylä et al. (2009) found that the relationship between the human development index (HDI) and the total fertility rate (TFR) reverses from negative (i.e., increases in HDI are associated with decreases in TFR) to positive (i.e., increases in HDI are associated with increases in TFR) at an HDI level of 0.86. In this article, we show that the reversal in the HDI-TFR relationship is robust to neither the UNDP’s recent revision in the HDI calculat…
Measuring Socioeconomic Inequalities With Predicted Absolute Incomes Rather Than Wealth Quintiles
Objectives. To compare the predictive power of synthetic absolute income measures with that of asset-based wealth quintiles in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) using child stunting as an outcome. Methods. We pooled data from 239 nationally representative household surveys from LMICs and computed absolute incomes in US dollars based on households’ asset rank as well as data on national consumption and inequality levels. We used multivariab…
Analyzing nutritional impacts of price and income related shocks in Malawi
Slow-downs of fertility decline
The phenomenon of fertility stalls in Africa has recently received much attention in the literature yet hasn't lead to clear-cut conclusions
A Human Development Index by Internal Migrational Status
Domestic migration constitutes the largest flow of people in developing countries and is among the most important opportunities for people to improve their human development. We calculate the Human Development Index by internal migrational status to assess the differences between the levels of human development of internal migrants compared with non-migrants. An empirical illustration for a sample of 16 low-income countries shows that, overall, i…
Large-scale slum mapping in sub-Saharan Africa's major cities
Around half of sub-Saharan Africa's urban population lives in slums, yet data on the spatiotemporal development of slums remains scarce, impeding policies to alleviate urban poverty and inequality. We propose a solution to this problem by applying deep learning to open-access satellite imagery to map slums in 529 major cities across sub-Saharan Africa and track their spatiotemporal development. Our model produced 10m resolution ‘slum probability …
The history and impact of social security in South Africa
This paper examines the history and impact of the rapidly expanding social protection system in South Africa. We document the dominance of cash transfer-based assistance programmes compared to social insurance. There is a clear racial pattern of social protection coverage, with Africans benefitting largely from social assistance and whites being disproportionately covered by social insurance. We also find that the expanded social assistance has a…
Empirical Analysis of Determinants, Distribution and Dynamics of Poverty
In recent years, the multidimensionality of poverty has been widely accepted and applied in the empirical analysis of poverty (see e.g.
Measuring Pro-Poor Growth in Non-Income Dimensions
A Human Development Index by Income Groups
Estimating Households Vulnerability to Idiosyncratic and Covariate Shocks
Inequality in Human Development
One of the most frequent critiques of the HDI is that is does not take into account inequality within countries in its three dimensions. In this paper, we apply a simply approach to compute the three components and the overall HDI for quintiles of the income distribution. This allows a comparison of the level in human development of the poor with the level of the non-poor within countries, but also across countries. This is an application of the …
A Household-Based Human Development Index
The history and impact of social security in South Africa
This paper examines the history and impact of the rapidly expanding social protection system in South Africa. We document the dominance of cash transfer-based assistance programmes compared to social insurance. There is a clear racial pattern of social protection coverage, with Africans benefitting largely from social assistance and whites being disproportionately covered by social insurance. We also find that the expanded social assistance has a…
A Human Development Index by Internal Migrational Status
Domestic migration constitutes the largest flow of people in developing countries and is among the most important opportunities for people to improve their human development. We calculate the Human Development Index by internal migrational status to assess the differences between the levels of human development of internal migrants compared with non-migrants. An empirical illustration for a sample of 16 low-income countries shows that, overall, i…
Deadly Cities? Spatial Inequalities in Mortality in sub-Saharan Africa
We investigate whether sub-Saharan African countries are affected by an "urban mortality penalty" repeating the history of industrialized countries during the nineteenth century. We analyze Demographic and Health Surveys from several sub-Saharan African countries for differences in child and adult mortality between rural and urban areas. For the first decade of the 2000s, our findings indicate that child mortality is higher in rural than in urban…
Do Fragile Countries Experience Worse MDG Progress
While it is regularly stated that development progress in so-called fragile states is lagging behind, only very limited empirical analysis exists that investigates to what extent the levels and trends in achievements in MDG indicators differ between fragile and other developing countries, and between different definitions of fragile states. We analyse levels of MDG indicators and progress towards achieving the MDGs between 1990 and 2008 of fragil…
Economic Growth and Child Undernutrition in sub-Saharan Africa
Despite recent improvements in economic performance, undernutrition rates in sub-Saharan Africa appear to have improved much less and rather inconsistently across the continent. We examine to what extent there is an empirical linkage between income growth and reductions of child undernutrition in Africa. We pool all DHS surveys for African countries, control for other correlates of undernutrition, and add country-level GDP per capita. We find tha…
A Reversal in the Relationship of Human Development With Fertility
Myrskylä et al. (2009) found that the relationship between the human development index (HDI) and the total fertility rate (TFR) reverses from negative (i.e., increases in HDI are associated with decreases in TFR) to positive (i.e., increases in HDI are associated with increases in TFR) at an HDI level of 0.86. In this article, we show that the reversal in the HDI-TFR relationship is robust to neither the UNDP’s recent revision in the HDI calculat…
Analyzing nutritional impacts of price and income related shocks in Malawi
The HIV Epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa is Aging
Desired Fertility and Number of Children Born Across Time and Space
Economists have often argued that high fertility rates are mainly driven by women’s demand for children (and not by family planning efforts) with low levels of unwanted fertility across countries (and hence with little room for family planning efforts to reduce population growth). We study the relationship between wanted fertility and number of children born in a panel of 200 country-years controlling for country fixed effects and global time tre…
Measuring Socioeconomic Inequalities With Predicted Absolute Incomes Rather Than Wealth Quintiles
Objectives. To compare the predictive power of synthetic absolute income measures with that of asset-based wealth quintiles in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) using child stunting as an outcome. Methods. We pooled data from 239 nationally representative household surveys from LMICs and computed absolute incomes in US dollars based on households’ asset rank as well as data on national consumption and inequality levels. We used multivariab…
Agricultural trade policies and child nutrition in low- and middle-income countries
BACKGROUND: There has been growing interest in understanding the role of agricultural trade policies in diet and nutrition. This cross-country study examines associations between government policies on agricultural trade prices and child nutrition outcomes, particularly undernutrition. METHODS: This study links panel data on government distortions to agricultural incentives to data from 212,258 children aged 6 to 35 months participating in Demogr…
Selective mortality and the anthropometric status of children in low- and middle-income countries
Modelling Under-Five Mortality through Multilevel Structured Additive Regression with Varying Coefficients for Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa
Despite improvements in global child health during the last three decades, under-five mortality rates remain significantly high in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Both regions did not achieve the MDG target of reducing under-five mortality rates by two thirds by 2015. The underlying causes of under-five mortality differ significantly between countries and between regions, which highlights the need to expand our understanding of the determinants of c…
Individual and social predictors of smoking and obesity
This is a longitudinal study of changes in smoking behaviour as well as becoming overweight/obese (OW/OB) and the strength of their association with personal factors such as self-control, mental health, and socioeconomic status (SES) versus their connection with the behaviour of other household members. Furthermore, we investigate that in terms of roles within a household, who is more vulnerable towards the behaviour of others. We used a hybrid m…
Modelling children's anthropometric status using Bayesian distributional regression merging socio-economic and remote sensed data from South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa
A history of insufficient nutritional intake is reflected by low anthropometric measures and can lead to growth failures, limited mental development, poor health outcomes and a higher risk of dying. Children below five years are among those most vulnerable and, while improvements in the share of children affected by insufficient nutritional intake has been observed, both sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have a disproportionately high share of gr…
Slow-downs of fertility decline
The phenomenon of fertility stalls in Africa has recently received much attention in the literature yet hasn't lead to clear-cut conclusions
Joint distribution of child mortality and wealth across 30 sub-Saharan African countries over 2000-2019
Background: While reductions in child mortality have been observed across sub-Saharan African countries in the last 30 years, narrowing the gaps in under-five mortality across socioeconomic groups also requires an understanding of the multiple associations between health and welfare and socioeconomic drivers. We examined the probability density distributions in under-five mortality within countries and joint pathways of under-five mortality and w…
Self-supervised learning unveils urban change from street-level images
Cities around the world are grappling with multiple interconnected challenges, including population growth, shortage of affordable and decent housing, and the need for neighborhood improvements. Despite its critical importance for policy, our ability to effectively monitor and track urban change remains limited. Deep learning-based computer vision methods applied to street-level images have been successful in the measurement of socioeconomic and …
Unpacking the impact of Covid-19 on child immunization
Our results indicate that the negative effect on child immunization was less severe and shorter than predicted by experts. Fear of COVID-19 and delayed vaccination campaigns had a substantial impact on childhood immunization while rising COVID-19 cases and moderate social distancing regulations did not seem to affect immunization rates
Economics (19 obras) · Demography (17 obras) · Geography (17 obras) · Economic growth (16 obras) · Population (15 obras) · Demography (12 obras) · Developing country (11 obras) · Medicine (11 obras) · Sociology (11 obras) · Income, Poverty, and Inequality (10 obras)