NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, November 22, 2013

The report looks at how individual choices that lead to these behaviors are formed and reviews the effectiveness of interventions such as legislation, taxation, behavioral change campaigns, and cash transfers to combat them. Risking your Health: Causes, Consequences and Interventions to Prevent Risky Behaviors concludes that legislation and taxation, for example, tend to be effective, especially when combined with strong enforcement mechanisms. According to the report, cash transfers also have proven to be promising in some settings. Behavior change campaigns, such as school-based sex education and calorie-labeling laws, are often less effective on their own, unless they are complemented with broader risk behavior change programs.