Danice Brown Guzmán

• Masters of Public Policy
• Associate Director at University of Notre Dame

Motivation Improved seed adoption can increase yield, enhance food security, improve livelihoods, and reduce poverty. Although many governments in the global South use seed subsidies to achieve these outcomes, the success and efficiency of input subsidies is subject to debate. Most smallholders in Nepal lack information and finance to access improv...

This article contributes to understanding the effectiveness of early grade reading interventions in low-income-country contexts and how and why such interventions vary in their effectiveness across schools. It presents the results from an impact evaluation of an early grade reading intervention in Haiti with a mixed-methods analysis of factors that...

Progress toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6, clean water and sanitation for all, is behind schedule and faces substantial financial challenges. Rigorous water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) interventions have underperformed, casting doubt on their efficacy and potentially undermining confidence in WASH funding and investments. But the...

This paper examines the relationship between school attendance and work among Nepalese children. Relative to non-working children, engagement in market work is associated with 1.5 additional missed school days per week; moreover, girls' engagement in domestic work is associated with 0.4 more days, when using self-reported data. Using responses from...

This paper examines school attendance among children in Nepal to evaluate the foregone human capital investment potentially associated with trading child labor for education. The researchers survey almost 2,900 household representatives and more than 3,400 children age 5 to 13. Response comparisons reveal that working children miss school more ofte...

Introduction Peri-urban settings have high maternal mortality and the quality of care received in different types of health facilities is varied. Yet few studies have explored the construct of person-centered maternity care (PCMC) within peri-urban settings. Understanding women’s experience of maternity care in peri-urban settings will allow health...

Background Kenya continues to have a high maternal mortality rate that is showing slow progress in improving. Peri-urban settings in Kenya have been reported to exhibit higher rates of maternal death during labor and childbirth as compared to the general Kenyan population. Although research indicates that women in Kenya have increased access to fac...

Introduction: Maternal mortality continues to be one of the biggest challenges of the health system in Kenya. Informal settlements in Kenya have been known to have higher rates of maternal mortality and also receive maternity services of varied quality. Data assessing progress on key maternal health indicators within informal settlements are also o...

Background Child victimization is one of the most serious, preventable threats to child health and wellbeing around the world. Contemporary research has demonstrated that polyvictimization, or children’s experience of multiple types of victimization, is particularly detrimental. Objective The current study aims to evaluate relationships between ch...

Since the 1980s, many developing countries have enacted policies of decentralization to create localized, representative forms of government. A highly under‐studied body of local governance are village development committees (VDCs). Utilizing a mixed‐method approach in three districts of Southern Malawi, we combine surveys, focus groups, and interv...

Existing research has suggested children of caregivers with histories of exposure to trauma are at heightened risk for victimization, but few studies have explored potential mechanisms that explain this intergenerational transmission of risk. With data from peri-urban households in Lima, Peru ( N = 402), this study analyzes parenting behaviors in t...

This study examined typologies of childhood polyvictimization and the associations of profiles with demographic characteristics at the levels of child, household, and primary caregiver. This study evaluated a sample of children aged 4 to 17 years residing in San Juan de Lurigancho District, an urban setting on the edge of Lima, Peru (n = 384). An i...

We collect data on child labor in almost 3,000 Nepali households, and our analysis shows that estimates of child labor prevalence vary from 11.6% to 29% with the definition of child labor used. The variation comes from the number of hours worked and from which tasks are considered child labor. Furthermore, we use two different surveys during data c...

Women experiencing domestic violence make tradeoffs and negotiations within their constrained environments to reduce the risk they and their children face. In societies where failure to fulfill domestic duties is considered justification for abuse, women may reduce their risk by ensuring adequate and quality food is available when needed. Improved...

Packaged water, particularly bagged sachet water, has become an important drinking water source in West Africa as local governments struggle to provide safe drinking water supplies. In Ghana, sachet water has become an important primary water source in urban centers, and a growing literature has explored various dimensions of this industry, includi...