Sarah Baird
Biographic Data
| ID | 221806 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sarah Baird |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sarah |
| FAMILY NAME | Baird |
| SIGNATURE | BAIRD S |
| AFFILIATIONS | George Washington University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5363-8559 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 102 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
“Being safe and being yourself is two different things”: A scoping review on the violence faced by sexual and gender minority adolescents living in low- and middle- income countries
Global associations of adolescent health with inclusive and sustainable well-being, 2010–2035
Background: Exploring how multidimensional social factors are linked with adolescent health could inform policies to achieve equitable and sustainable well-being. We aimed to examine the associations between adolescent health and three dimensions of social development globally. Methods: We conducted a global ecological analysis across 193 countries using data from the Global Burden of Disease 2021. We analysed age-standardised DALY rates (ASDR) f…
Measuring adolescent girls' agency
INTRODUCTION: The last decade has experienced a surge of interventions focused on improving adolescent girls' agency. Yet measuring adolescent girls' agency continues to be a challenge, limiting the ability to track impact. This study addresses this evidence gap by constructing and validating a multidimensional measure of agency among adolescent girls in Ethiopia. METHODS: This study utilized cross-sectional data from 3033 in school adolescent gi…
Exploring disparities and drivers of contraceptive use among Syrian refugee youth: Evidence from a mixed-methods study in Jordan
These results highlight that youth-friendly reproductive health services are having mixed efficacy in Jordan. Understanding barriers to contraception should inform family planning services for marginalized groups like Syrian refugee youth. There is a need for evidence-informed efforts to expand provision of family planning counselling and access to contraceptives for young married couples in Jordan, and especially for those living in formal refug…
Adolescence, Interrupted: A narrative review of the impact of Covid-19 on adolescent wellbeing
Child marriage in contexts of forced displacement: Exploring drivers and decision-making in Jordan through a gender and generational lens
Given the importance of economic precarity, ending child marriage in contexts of forced displacement will require expanding girls' access to education and improving refugees' access to work, which will provide a route through which fathers and young men can demonstrate their adult masculinity, and to allow girls and women some measure of financial independence. Given that displacement now often lasts for decades, the humanitarian sector also need…
Therapy, mental health, and human capital accumulation among adolescent girls in Uganda
Child marriage and its consequences for adolescent mental health in conflict-affected contexts: Evidence from Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Jordan
Armed conflict and adolescent social capital in Ethiopia
Despite the far-ranging direct effects of armed conflict on daily life, physical health, and economic outcomes, there is limited evidence on its impacts on social and political outcomes, and even less evidence on its impacts on adolescents, despite this being a pivotal life-stage. This paper seeks to address this critical gap in the literature by exploring the effects of armed conflict in northern Ethiopia that lasted from 2022 to 2022 on adolesc…
Can social protection contribute to social connectedness in contexts of forced displacement and crisis? Lessons from Jordan’s labelled cash transfer for education
Social protection programming can help address gender- and lifecycle-specific vulnerabilities, particularly in humanitarian contexts. Although adolescents are disproportionately affected by crises, there remains limited evidence about how such programming can mitigate risks they face, including social isolation. This article explores how a 'cash-plus' social protection response enhances refugee adolescents' social connectedness and contributes to…
Mind the Gaps’: Exploring Regional and Gender Patterns in Threats to Ethiopian Adolescents’ Bodily Integrity
Spurred by international commitments to address age- and gender-based violence, this article uses a capabilities framework to address an important data gap on violence against adolescents in Ethiopia. It draws on mixed-methods data collected in 2019/2020 in three diverse rural regions. This includes surveys completed by 5539 girls and boys as well as 819 qualitative interviews with adolescents, caregivers, community members, and service providers…
Asset transfers and anti-poverty programs: Experimental evidence from Tanzania
Disrupted education trajectories: Exploring the effects of Covid‐19 on adolescent learning and priorities for “building back better” education systems in Ethiopia
Adolescent support club attendance and self-efficacy associated with HIV treatment outcomes in Tanzania
HIV treatment outcomes may be improved by ameliorating psychosocial challenges adolescents living with HIV (ALHIV) face. This analysis describes participation in existing facility-based adolescent clubs and the associations between club attendance, adolescent well-being and HIV treatment outcomes. Data were collected through interviews with a sub-sample of adolescents age 10–19 years and medical record abstraction of all adolescents attending HIV…
Identifying psychological trauma among Syrian refugee children for early intervention: Analyzing digitized drawings using machine learning
Nearly 5.6 million Syrian refugees have been displaced by the country's civil war, of which roughly half are children. A digital analysis of features in children's drawings potentially represents a rapid, cost-effective, and non-invasive method for collecting information about children's mental health. Using data collected from free drawings and self-portraits from 2480 Syrian refugee children in Jordan across two distinct datasets, we use LASSO …
Deepening or Diminishing Ethnic Divides? The Impact of Urban Migration in Kenya
The impact of urban migration on ethnic politics is the subject of long‐standing debate. “First‐generation” modernization theories predict that urban migration should reduce ethnic identification and increase trust between groups. “Second‐generation” modernization perspectives argue the opposite: Urban migration may amplify ethnic identification and reduce trust. We test these competing expectations with a three‐wave panel survey following more t…
Women's employment and Children's education: Longitudinal evidence from Nepal
Multilevel influences of women’s empowerment and economic resources on risky sexual behaviour among young women in Zomba district, Malawi
Gender disparities are pronounced in Zomba district, Malawi. Among women aged 15–49 years, HIV prevalence is 16.8%, compared with 9.3% among men of the same age. Complex structural factors are associated with risky sexual behaviour leading to HIV infection. This study’s objective was to explore associations between multilevel measures of economic resources and women’s empowerment with risky sexual behaviour among young women in Zomba. Four measur…
Facilitators and barriers to antiretroviral therapy adherence among HIV-positive adolescents living in Tanzania
Logistical and psychosocial factors can hinder adherence. Interventions that provide both education and psychosocial support, such as peer support groups, have the potential to improve health outcomes for this population, but may not address more persistent barriers to adherence rooted in lack of treatment support from family members or friends who have not been disclosed to, or lack of transportation funds/food security
Absenteeism, Dropout, and On-Time School Completion of Vulnerable Primary School Students in Ethiopia: Exploring the Role of Adolescent Decision-Making Power in the Household, Exposure to Violence, an…
While Ethiopia has seen a rapid expansion of school enrollment over the past 25 years, especially in primary education, dropout, absenteeism, and grade repetition remain key challenges to achieving the education-related Sustainable Development Goals. This article uses the 2017/18 Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) survey of 6800 Ethiopian adolescents and regression analysis to examine how exposure to and /or experience of violence (fr…
No One Should Be Terrified Like I Was!’ Exploring Drivers and Impacts of Child Marriage in Protracted Crises Among Palestinian and Syrian Refugees
Exacerbated by 9 years of conflict and displacement, child marriage among Syrian refugees appears to be increasing, while in Gaza, the noticeable reduction in child brides over the past two decades has recently plateaued. This comparative study explores drivers and consequences of child marriage in protracted crises, drawing on mixed-methods research from Gaza and Jordan with married adolescent girls and their parents. Our findings suggest that c…
No One Left Behind: Using Mixed-Methods Research to Identify and Learn from Socially Marginalised Adolescents in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
This article describes the mixed-methods approach used by the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) research programme. It discusses how qualitative and quantitative methods can be used both in isolation and combined to learn about the lives of adolescents in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), focusing on the methodological and ethical approaches used to reach socially marginalised adolescents (including adolescents with disabilit…
Intersectionality as a Framework for Understanding Adolescent Vulnerabilities in Low and Middle Income Countries: Expanding Our Commitment to Leave No One Behind
Given increasing policy attention to the consequences of youth marginalisation for development processes, engaging with the experiences of socially marginalised adolescents in low- and middle-income countries (including those who are out of school, refugees, married, with disabilities or adolescent parents) is a pressing priority. To understand how these disadvantages—and adolescents’ abilities to respond to them—intersect to shape opportunities …
If She’s Pregnant, then that Means that Her Dreams Fade Away’: Exploring Experiences of Adolescent Pregnancy and Motherhood in Rwanda
Adolescent motherhood can alter the future opportunities available to girls and the challenges they face. This article considers how adolescents’ capabilities are influenced by pregnancy and motherhood, using a mixed-methods case study of Rwanda. Adolescent motherhood impacts girls’ lives across multiple capabilities including education, psychosocial well-being, voice and agency, and economic empowerment. Rarely were adolescent mothers in our sam…
Intersecting barriers to adolescents’ educational access during Covid-19: Exploring the role of gender, disability and poverty
This article explores the social determinants of adolescents' access to education during the COVID-19 pandemic in three diverse urban contexts in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Jordan. It provides novel empirical data from the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence longitudinal study, drawing on phone surveys (4441), qualitative interviews with adolescents aged 12-19 years (500), and key informant interviews conducted between April and October 2020. F…
When the money runs out: Do cash transfers have sustained effects on human capital accumulation
The effects of cash transfers on adult labor market outcomes
ᅟThe basic economic model of labor supply has a very clear prediction of what we should expect when an adult receives an unexpected cash windfall: they should work less and earn less. This intuition underlies concerns that many types of cash transfers, ranging from government benefits to migrant remittances, will undermine work ethics and make recipients lazy. We discuss a range of additional channels to this simple labor-leisure trade-off that c…
Maternal employment and child health in Nepal: The importance of job type and timing across the child's first five years
Intersecting barriers to adolescents’ educational access during Covid-19: Exploring the role of gender, disability and poverty
This article explores the social determinants of adolescents' access to education during the COVID-19 pandemic in three diverse urban contexts in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Jordan. It provides novel empirical data from the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence longitudinal study, drawing on phone surveys (4441), qualitative interviews with adolescents aged 12-19 years (500), and key informant interviews conducted between April and October 2020. F…
Deepening or Diminishing Ethnic Divides? The Impact of Urban Migration in Kenya
The impact of urban migration on ethnic politics is the subject of long‐standing debate. “First‐generation” modernization theories predict that urban migration should reduce ethnic identification and increase trust between groups. “Second‐generation” modernization perspectives argue the opposite: Urban migration may amplify ethnic identification and reduce trust. We test these competing expectations with a three‐wave panel survey following more t…
Intersectionality as a Framework for Understanding Adolescent Vulnerabilities in Low and Middle Income Countries: Expanding Our Commitment to Leave No One Behind
Given increasing policy attention to the consequences of youth marginalisation for development processes, engaging with the experiences of socially marginalised adolescents in low- and middle-income countries (including those who are out of school, refugees, married, with disabilities or adolescent parents) is a pressing priority. To understand how these disadvantages—and adolescents’ abilities to respond to them—intersect to shape opportunities …
No One Left Behind: Using Mixed-Methods Research to Identify and Learn from Socially Marginalised Adolescents in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
This article describes the mixed-methods approach used by the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) research programme. It discusses how qualitative and quantitative methods can be used both in isolation and combined to learn about the lives of adolescents in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), focusing on the methodological and ethical approaches used to reach socially marginalised adolescents (including adolescents with disabilit…
Can social protection contribute to social connectedness in contexts of forced displacement and crisis? Lessons from Jordan’s labelled cash transfer for education
Social protection programming can help address gender- and lifecycle-specific vulnerabilities, particularly in humanitarian contexts. Although adolescents are disproportionately affected by crises, there remains limited evidence about how such programming can mitigate risks they face, including social isolation. This article explores how a 'cash-plus' social protection response enhances refugee adolescents' social connectedness and contributes to…
Examining the reliability of self-reported data on school participation
No One Should Be Terrified Like I Was!’ Exploring Drivers and Impacts of Child Marriage in Protracted Crises Among Palestinian and Syrian Refugees
Exacerbated by 9 years of conflict and displacement, child marriage among Syrian refugees appears to be increasing, while in Gaza, the noticeable reduction in child brides over the past two decades has recently plateaued. This comparative study explores drivers and consequences of child marriage in protracted crises, drawing on mixed-methods research from Gaza and Jordan with married adolescent girls and their parents. Our findings suggest that c…
Exploring the impacts of Covid-19 on Rohingya adolescents in Cox's Bazar: A mixed-methods study
This article explores how intersecting vulnerabilities faced by Rohingya adolescents living in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, have been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both the direct health impacts and the indirect repercussions of COVID-19 mitigation strategies have served to heighten pre-existing risks, preventing adolescents from reaching their full capabilities. This article provides empirical mixed-methods data from the Gender and Adole…
Therapy, mental health, and human capital accumulation among adolescent girls in Uganda
Child marriage and its consequences for adolescent mental health in conflict-affected contexts: Evidence from Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Jordan
Asset transfers and anti-poverty programs: Experimental evidence from Tanzania
Women's employment and Children's education: Longitudinal evidence from Nepal
Absenteeism, Dropout, and On-Time School Completion of Vulnerable Primary School Students in Ethiopia: Exploring the Role of Adolescent Decision-Making Power in the Household, Exposure to Violence, an…
While Ethiopia has seen a rapid expansion of school enrollment over the past 25 years, especially in primary education, dropout, absenteeism, and grade repetition remain key challenges to achieving the education-related Sustainable Development Goals. This article uses the 2017/18 Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) survey of 6800 Ethiopian adolescents and regression analysis to examine how exposure to and /or experience of violence (fr…
If She’s Pregnant, then that Means that Her Dreams Fade Away’: Exploring Experiences of Adolescent Pregnancy and Motherhood in Rwanda
Adolescent motherhood can alter the future opportunities available to girls and the challenges they face. This article considers how adolescents’ capabilities are influenced by pregnancy and motherhood, using a mixed-methods case study of Rwanda. Adolescent motherhood impacts girls’ lives across multiple capabilities including education, psychosocial well-being, voice and agency, and economic empowerment. Rarely were adolescent mothers in our sam…
Randomized control trial as social observatory: A case study
The short‐term impacts of a schooling conditional cash transfer program on the sexual behavior of young women
Recent evidence suggests that conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs for schooling are effective in raising school enrolment and attendance. However, there is also reason to believe that such programs can affect other outcomes, such as the sexual behavior of their young beneficiaries. Zomba Cash Transfer Program is a randomized ongoing CCT intervention targeting young women in Malawi that provides incentives (in the form of school fees and cash…
Cash or Condition? Evidence from a Cash Transfer Experiment
This article assesses the role of conditionality in cash transfer programs using a unique experiment targeted at adolescent girls in Malawi. The program featured two distinct interventions: unconditional transfers (UCT arm) and transfers conditional on school attendance (CCT arm). Although there was a modest decline in the dropout rate in the UCT arm in comparison with the control group, it was only 43% as large as the impact in the CCT arm at th…
Aggregate Income Shocks and Infant Mortality in the Developing World
Health and income are strongly correlated both within and across countries, yet the extent to which improvements in income have a causal effect on health status remains controversial. We investigate whether short-term fluctuations in aggregate income affect infant mortality using an unusually large data set of 1.7 million births in 59 developing countries. We show a large, negative association between per capita GDP and infant mortality. Female i…
Examining the reliability of self-reported data on school participation
Relative Effectiveness of Conditional and Unconditional Cash Transfers for Schooling Outcomes in Developing Countries: A Systematic Review
Conditional, unconditional and everything in between: A systematic review of the effects of cash transfer programmes on schooling outcomes
Designing Experiments to Measure Spillover Effects
This paper formalizes the design of \n experiments intended specifically to study spillover \n effects. By first randomizing the intensity of treatment \n within clusters and then randomly assigning individual \n treatment conditional on this cluster-level intensity, a \n novel set of treatment effects can be identified. The paper \n develops a formal framework for consistent estimation of \n these effects, provides explicit expressions for power…
Conditional Cash Transfers: Influence on Marriage and Fertility
Transactional Sex in Malawi
This chapter examines transactional sex as a distinctive feature of traditional “dating” in Malawi. It begins with a review of the existing literature on transactional sex in sub-Saharan Africa, with particular emphasis on the distinction between commercial sex work, informal sex work, and transactional sex. It then analyzes transactional sex among a sample of 13- to 22-year-old, initially never-married females in southern Malawi. It also conside…
Worms at Work: Long-run Impacts of a Child Health Investment
This study estimates long-run impacts of a child health investment, exploiting community-wide experimental variation in school-based deworming. The program increased labor supply among men and education among women, with accompanying shifts in labor market specialization. Ten years after deworming treatment, men who were eligible as boys stay enrolled for more years of primary school, work 17% more hours each week, spend more time in nonagricultu…
Association Between Hiv Awareness Factors, Health Facility Characteristics and Risky Sexual Behaviour Among Young Women in Zomba District, Malawi
The objective of this study was to examine the association between multilevel factors related to HIV awareness and risky sexual behaviour among young women in Zomba district, Malawi. Secondary analyses of the Schooling, Income, and Health Risk (SIHR) study were undertaken. Four outcomes related to risky sexual behaviour were examined among young women: if participants had ever had sex, consistent condom use and two scores measuring risk related t…
Optimal Design of Experiments in the Presence of Interference
We formalize the optimal design of experiments when there is interference between units, i.e. an individual's outcome depends on the outcomes of others in her group. We focus on randomized saturation designs, two-stage experiments that first randomize treatment saturation of a group, then individual treatment assignment. We map the potential outcomes framework with partial interference to a regression model with clustered errors, calculate standa…
The effects of cash transfers on adult labor market outcomes
ᅟThe basic economic model of labor supply has a very clear prediction of what we should expect when an adult receives an unexpected cash windfall: they should work less and earn less. This intuition underlies concerns that many types of cash transfers, ranging from government benefits to migrant remittances, will undermine work ethics and make recipients lazy. We discuss a range of additional channels to this simple labor-leisure trade-off that c…
Do restrictive gender attitudes and norms influence physical and mental health during very young Adolescence? Evidence from Bangladesh and Ethiopia
Adolescence is seen as a window of opportunity for intervention but also as a time during which restrictive gender attitudes and norms become more salient. This increasingly gendered world has the potential to profoundly influence adolescents' capabilities, including their physical and mental health. Using quantitative data on 6,500 young adolescents (10-12) from the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) program, this paper analyses the …
Randomized control trial as social observatory: A case study
When the money runs out: Do cash transfers have sustained effects on human capital accumulation
Maternal employment and child health in Nepal: The importance of job type and timing across the child's first five years
Gender-norms, violence and adolescence: Exploring how gender norms are associated with experiences of childhood violence among young adolescents in Ethiopia
Adolescence is a time of particular risk for violence perpetrated by parents, teachers, peers and intimate partners. Social norms that condone violent discipline, promote masculinities focused on violence, and support gender inequality play an important role in perpetuating violence. However, little is known about the relationship between inequitable gender norms and children's experiences of violence from parents or other adults in the household…
Intersecting inequalities, gender and adolescent health in Ethiopia
Background Until recently, global public health initiatives have tended to overlook the ways that social factors shape adolescent health, and particularly how these dynamics affect the specific needs of adolescents in relation to information about puberty, menstruation and sexual health. This article draws on mixed methods data from rural and urban areas of Ethiopia to explore how access to health information and resources - and subsequently heal…
Exploring the impacts of Covid-19 on Rohingya adolescents in Cox's Bazar: A mixed-methods study
This article explores how intersecting vulnerabilities faced by Rohingya adolescents living in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, have been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both the direct health impacts and the indirect repercussions of COVID-19 mitigation strategies have served to heighten pre-existing risks, preventing adolescents from reaching their full capabilities. This article provides empirical mixed-methods data from the Gender and Adole…
Social Isolation and Disrupted Privacy: Impacts of Covid-19 on Adolescent Girls in Humanitarian Contexts
The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown has shattered the everyday lives of young people, limiting peer interactions and disrupting privacy, with potential for long-term detrimental impacts. This study uses rapid virtual quantitative and qualitative surveys undertaken from April to July 2020 with over 4,800 adolescents affected by displacement in Bangladesh and Jordan to explore adolescent girls’ experiences of social isolation and lack of …
Multilevel influences of women’s empowerment and economic resources on risky sexual behaviour among young women in Zomba district, Malawi
Gender disparities are pronounced in Zomba district, Malawi. Among women aged 15–49 years, HIV prevalence is 16.8%, compared with 9.3% among men of the same age. Complex structural factors are associated with risky sexual behaviour leading to HIV infection. This study’s objective was to explore associations between multilevel measures of economic resources and women’s empowerment with risky sexual behaviour among young women in Zomba. Four measur…
Facilitators and barriers to antiretroviral therapy adherence among HIV-positive adolescents living in Tanzania
Logistical and psychosocial factors can hinder adherence. Interventions that provide both education and psychosocial support, such as peer support groups, have the potential to improve health outcomes for this population, but may not address more persistent barriers to adherence rooted in lack of treatment support from family members or friends who have not been disclosed to, or lack of transportation funds/food security
Absenteeism, Dropout, and On-Time School Completion of Vulnerable Primary School Students in Ethiopia: Exploring the Role of Adolescent Decision-Making Power in the Household, Exposure to Violence, an…
While Ethiopia has seen a rapid expansion of school enrollment over the past 25 years, especially in primary education, dropout, absenteeism, and grade repetition remain key challenges to achieving the education-related Sustainable Development Goals. This article uses the 2017/18 Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) survey of 6800 Ethiopian adolescents and regression analysis to examine how exposure to and /or experience of violence (fr…
No One Should Be Terrified Like I Was!’ Exploring Drivers and Impacts of Child Marriage in Protracted Crises Among Palestinian and Syrian Refugees
Exacerbated by 9 years of conflict and displacement, child marriage among Syrian refugees appears to be increasing, while in Gaza, the noticeable reduction in child brides over the past two decades has recently plateaued. This comparative study explores drivers and consequences of child marriage in protracted crises, drawing on mixed-methods research from Gaza and Jordan with married adolescent girls and their parents. Our findings suggest that c…
Psychology (26 works) · Medicine (24 works) · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare (23 works) · Economics (19 works) · Economic growth (18 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Political science (17 works) · Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (15 works) · Demography (11 works) · Global Maternal and Child Health (11 works)