Social networks and literacy

From Regina Almeyda Duran:

Literacy has positive effects on health and education. For the most part, empirical studies have considered benefits from literacy to spread only to the nuclear family. Literacy may also, however, generate externalities outside the immediate family. In the literature, this has been called proximate literacy. Proximate literacy refers to the idea that an illiterate person acquires a sort of literacy by being around other literate individuals. On the other hand, bargaining models of household allocation provide evidence that individuals within a household may not fully pool their resources. Being literate in a household where everybody else remains illiterate may shift the balance of power and work in the advantage of the literate, producing a negative externality. The primary objective of this paper is to examine whether there exist positive or negative externalities or spillovers of literacy within and across households on child health when the literate in the household is a non-parent. The estimation results show that in cases where parents are both illiterate: (1) there are positive significant externalities on child health that accrue from the presence of a female literate in the household. The effect from the presence of a male literate is not significantly different from zero. (2) These spillovers are also positive and significant at the village level; and (3) there is some evidence of negative literacy externalities of male adults in long term child nutritional status.

This looks intersting. I'm curious to see how the model is estimated since it's inherently a multilevel pheonomenon. (For Columbia people: the talk is Tuesday, September 20th, 1:10-2:00pm, in International Affairs Building, Room 1027.)

P.S. It's interesting that this is in the economics seminar since it seems more like sociology to me.