Read me file for "Child Anemia and the 2008 Food Price Crisis in Senegal", published in Demographic Research, by Jesse McDevitt-Irwin. The file dates to July 2024. Please contact Jesse McDevitt-Irwin (jrmcirwin.github.io) with any questions about these files.

Files in this archive:

prices.RDS
A R-ready dataset of food prices from Senegal. These are publicly-available from FRED and FAO, as described in the paper, harmonized by the author.

Full_code.R
An R-code which will produce all analyses and figures from the paper. The code begins by assembling the DHS data from different years, selecting only the relevant variables. Then it defines new variables like the treatment status (in-utero/breastfeeding/reference), as discussed in the paper. Then it conducts regression analysis. Finally it produces the figures from the paper. The necessary inputs are: (1) prices.RDS, (2) DHS child recode surveys (not publicly available), and (3) the EPS survey (not publicly available). The DHS child recodes should be downloaded in their .DTA format. The EPS survey is only available in .SAV format, are should be read into R. The price data are provided in .RDS format. All data must be placed in your local directory. You should replace the phrase "your_input_path" in the code with this local directory. You should replace the phrase "your_output_path" with whatever local directory you would like the figures and tables to be saved to.

Data Guide.txt
A text file describing the DHS and EPS data, and explaining where and how to access them.