India’s ecological fiscal transfers provide Indian states with the incentive to increase their forestry budgets as an investment in increased future shares of central taxes. In this paper, we look at whether states are yet taking advantage of this opportunity.

In this paper we combine fourteen years of high-resolution satellite data on forest loss with individual-level survey data on malaria in more than 60,000 rural children in 17 countries in Africa, and fever in more than 470,000 rural children in 41 countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. W...