This dissertation studies the effects of orphanhood on health and education outcomes of children in the Kagera Region of Tanzania. Using a dataset on members of the extended family networks of orphaned children, I assess by how much the effects of orphanhood are reduced due to a systematic placement of the orphans- within the family network.

Chapter 2 describes the dataset on the extended family networks that were collected by the author and are used in combination with a longitudinal survey on children's health and education outcomes.

Chapter 3 develops a framework for analyzing the placement of orphans within the family network and for analyzing orphans' outcomes. In particular, I show that, if orphans are systematically placed within the family network, then the coefficients from a regression of orphans' outcomes on caretaker characteristics are biased. This bias can be corrected by using the predicted probabilities from the placement estimation to construct a selection correction term and including it in the outcome regressions.

Using information on the potential and actual placement of orphans, chapter 4 examines the determinants of the placement of the orphans within the family network. The empirical results show that the occupations and relative wealth of potential caretakers influence where orphans are placed. In particular, owning business assets or being a trader increases the probability of taking care of an orphan by six and twelve percent, respectively. These economic concerns are balanced with cultural norms: paternal relatives are much more likely to be caretakers than maternal relatives.

Chapter 5 studies the impacts of orphanhood and of the systematic placement on orphans' outcomes. I find that orphanhood has significant negative impacts on female orphans' welfare in terms of health and education, not however for male orphans. Moreover, orphans are systematically placed in families in which they receive more education. The caretakers provide orphans with one year of education more relative to the average family within the extended family network. Family networks do not perform as well, however, with regards to the health of the orphans. Family networks might be able to mitigate effects on orphans' education by systematically placing the orphan with better families within the family network, but fail to do so for orphans' health.