Effect of Slum Redevelopment on Child Health Outcomes: Evidence from Mumbai

Acknowledgements I am extremely grateful for the support and guidance provided by my advisor, Dr. Erica Field, in talking through data collection challenges and my data analysis and empirical strategy. I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Michelle Connolly, who provided immensely valuable feedback over the last year for the research study. Without Dr. Connolly's meticulous support, this thesis would not have been possible. Further, I am grateful for the constant inputs from Dr. Abstract As the population of urban poor living in slums increases, governments are trying to relocate people into government-provided free housing. Slum redevelopment affects every part of a household's livelihood, but most importantly the health and wellbeing of younger generations. This paper investigates the effect of slum redevelopment schemes on child stunting levels. Data was collected in forty-one buildings under the slum-redevelopment program in Mumbai. The study demonstrates through a fixed effect regression analysis that an additional year of living in the building is associated with an increase in the height-forage Z-score by 0.124 standard deviations. Possible explanations include an improvement in the overall hygienic environment, sanitation conditions, indoor air pollution, and access to health and water facilities. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that water contamination, loss of livelihood and increased expenses could worsen health outcomes for residents. This study prompts more research on the health effects of slum redevelopment projects, which are becoming increasingly common in the rapidly urbanizing developing world.