Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-dfsvx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T15:39:01.821Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Natural disasters and child health

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2020

Dhanushka Thamarapani Open the ORCID record for Dhanushka Thamarapani [Opens in a new window]
Dhanushka Thamarapani*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, California State University, Chico, CA, USA
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: dthamarapani@csuchico.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

With the increasing number of natural disasters, understanding the links between these events and child health has become timely and pertinent. Using a panel dataset, this paper empirically investigates the persistent effects on child health due to exposure to a series of natural disasters that occurred from 2002 to 2007 in Indonesia. We find that girls exposed to multiple disaster events are 0.19 standard deviations shorter and are 7 per cent more likely to be stunted when measured 7 to 12 years later. We find no persistent effect on boys. From a public policy perspective, we highlight the need for coping strategies beyond access to credit or remittances in order to mitigate growth retardation in children.

Keywords

childhood shockscredit availabilityIndonesiastuntingI15J13J16O53
Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , February 2021 , pp. 26 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abadie, A, Athley, S, Imbens, G and Wooldridge, J (2017) When should you adjust standard errors for clustering? Working paper No. w24003, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adair, L (1999) Filipino Children exhibit catch-up growth from age 2 to 12 years. The Journal of Nutrition 129, 1140–1148.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Adair, L and Guilkey, DK (1997) Age-specific determinants of stunting in Filipino children. The Journal of Nutrition 127, 314–320.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Adams, RH and Cuecuecha, A (2010) The economic impact of international remittances on household consumption and investment in Indonesia. Policy Research Working Paper 5433, The World Bank, Washington, DC.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Akresh, R, Bhalotra, S, Leone, M and Osili, U (2012) War and stature: growing up during the Nigerian civil war. American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 102, 273–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Almond, D and Currie, J (2011) Killing me softly: the fetal origins hypothesis. Journal of Economic Perspectives 25, 153–172.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Almond, D and Mazumder, B (2011) Health capital and the prenatal environment: the effect of ramadan observance during pregnancy, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 3, 56–85.Google Scholar
Bakkour, D, Enjolras, G, Thouret, J, Kast, R, Tyas, E, Mei, W and Prihatminingtyas, B (2015) The adaptive governance of natural disaster systems: insights from the 2010 Mount Merapi eruption in Indonesia. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 13, 167–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Behrman, JR and Rosenzweig, MR (2004) Returns to birthweight. Review of Economics and Statistics 86, 586–601.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, J, Dizon-Ross, R and Jagnani, M (2019) Not playing favorites: an experiment on parental preferences for educational investment. Available at https://www.amse-aixmarseille.fr/sites/default/files/events/bdj_0.pdf.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Block, SA, Keiss, L, Webb, P, Kosen, S, Moench-Pfanner, R, Bloem, MW and Timmer, CP (2003) Macro shocks and micro(scopic) outcomes: child nutrition during Indonesia's crisis. Nutrition Working Paper No. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brunson, J (2017) Maternal, newborn, and child health after the 2015 Nepal earthquakes: an investigation of the long-term gendered impacts of disasters. Maternal and Child Health Journal 21, 2267–2273.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caruso, GD (2017) The legacy of natural disasters: the intergenerational impact of 100 years of disasters in Latin America. Journal of Development Economics 127, 209–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caruso, GD and Miller, S (2015) Long run effects and intergenerational transmission of natural disasters: a case study on the 1970 Ancash earthquake. Journal of Development Economics 117, 134–150.Google Scholar
Coneus, K and Spiess, CK (2012) The intergenerational transmission of health in early childhood – evidence from the German socio-economic panel study. Economics and Human Biology 10, 89–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cornwell, K and Inder, B (2015) Child health and rainfall in early life. The Journal of Development Studies 51, 865–880.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Currie, J (2009) Healthy, wealthy, and wise: socioeconomic status, poor health in childhood, and human capital development. Journal of Economic Literature 47, 87–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Currie, J and Moretti, E (2007) Biology as destiny? Short and long run determinants of intergenerational transmission of birth weight. Journal of Labor Economics 25, 231–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Datar, A, Liu, J, Linnemayr, S and Stecher, C (2013) The impact of natural disasters on child health and investments in rural India. Social Science & Medicine 76, 83–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Deaton, A (1991) Savings and liquidity constraints. Econometrica 59, 1221–1248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deuchert, E and Felfe, C (2015) The tempest: short- and long-term consequences of a natural disaster for children's development. European Economic Review 80, 280–294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
EM-DAT (2018) The OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database. Université Catholique de Louvain, Brussels (Belgium). Available at www.emdat.be.Google Scholar
Favor, LJ (2011) Global Issues: Natural Disasters. New York: Facts on File.Google Scholar
Fogel, RW (1994) Economic growth, population, theory, and physiology: the bearing of long-term processes onn the making of economic policy. Amercian Economic Review 84, 369–395.Google Scholar
Foster, AD (1995) Prices, credit markets and child growth in low-income rural areas. The Economic Journal 105, 551–570.Google Scholar
Frankenberg, E and Karoly, L (1995) The 1993 Indonesian Family Live Survey: Overview and field Report. RAND. DRU-1195/1-NICHD/AID. Available at https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/drafts/2007/DRU1195.1.pdf.Google Scholar
Fujiki, H and Hsiao, C (2015) Disentangling the effects of multiple treatments – measuring the net economic impact of the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake. Journal of Econometrics 186, 66–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gignoux, J and Menéndez, M (2016) Benefit in the wake of disaster: long-run effects of earthquakes on welfare in rural Indonesia. Journal of Development Economics 118, 26–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giles, J and Satriawan, E (2015) Protecting child nutritional status in the aftermath of a financial crisis: evidence from Indonesia. Journal of Development Economics 114, 97–106..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godoy, R, Nyberg, C, Eisenberg, D, Magvanjav, O, Shinnar, E, Leonard, W, Gravlee, C, Reyes-Garcia, V, Mcdade, T, Huanca, T and Tanner, S (2010) Short but catching up: statural growth among Native Amazonian Bolivian children. American Journal of Human Biology 22, 336–347.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Günther, I and Harttgen, K (2009) Estimating households vulnerability to idiosyncratic and covariate shocks: a novel method applied in Madagascar. World Development 37, 1222–1234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hallegatte, S, Vogt-Schilb, A, Bangalore, M and Rozenberg, J (2016) Unbreakable: Building the Resilience of the Poor in the Face of Natural Disasters. Washington, DC: World Bank Publications.Google Scholar
Hill, RV and Porter, C (2017) Vulnerability to drought and food price shocks: evidence from Ethiopia. World Development 96, 65–77.Google Scholar
Hoddinott, J, Alderman, H, Behrman, J, Haddad, L and Horton, S (2013) The economic rationale for investing in stunting reduction. Maternal & Child Nutrition 9, 69–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jayachandran, S (2009) Air quality and early-life mortality evidence from Indonesia's wildfires. Journal of Human Resources 44, 916–954.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khusun, H, Yip, R, Schultink, W and Dillon, DH (1999) World Health Organization hemoglobin cut-off points for the detection of anemia are valid for an Indonesian population. The Journal of Nutrition 129, 1669–1674.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kusumastuti, R, Viverita, Z, Suardi, L and Danarsari, D (2014) Developing a resilience index towards natural disasters in Indonesia. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 10, 327–340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levine, D and Kevane, M (2003) Are investments in daughters lower when daughters move away? evidence from Indonesia. World Development 31, 1065–1084.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maccini, S and Yang, D (2009) Under the weather: health, schooling, and economic consequences of early-life rainfall. American Economic Review 99, 1006–1026.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maclean, JC, Popovici, I and French, MT (2016) Are natural disasters in early childhood associated with mental health and substance use disorders as an adult? Social Science and Medicine 151, 78–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nguyen, T and Purnamasari, R (2011) Impacts of international migration and remittances on child outcomes and labor supply in Indonesia. How does gender matter? Policy Research Working Paper 5591, The World Bank, Washington, DC.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nguyen, T, Nguyen, T and Grote, U (2020) Multiple shocks and households’ choice of coping strategies in rural Cambodia. Ecological Economics 167, 106442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orazem, PF and King, EM (2007) Schooling in developing countries: the roles of supply, demand and government policy. In Schultz, T and Strauss, J (eds), Handbook of Development Economics, vol. 4. Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 3475–3559.Google Scholar
Philipsborn, R and Chan, K (2018) Climate change and global child health. Pediatrics 141, e20173774.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pujiono, P (2008) National policy reform for disaster risk reduction. In Karnawati, D, Pramumijoyo, S, Anderson, R and Husein, S (eds). The Yogyakarta Earthquake of 27 May 2006. Jakarta: Star Publishing Co, pp. 22-1–22-6.Google Scholar
Sawada, Y (2007) The impact of natural and manmade disasters on household welfare. Agricultural Economics 37, 59–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strauss, J and Thomas, D (1998) Health, nutrition, and economic development. Journal of Economic Literature 36, 766–817.Google Scholar
Strauss, J and Thomas, D (2007) Health over the life course. In Schultz, T and Strauss, J (eds), Handbook of Development Economics, vol. 4. Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 3375–3474.Google Scholar
Trisnantoro, L, Soemantri, S, Singgih, B, Pritasari, K, Mulati, E, Agung, F and Weber, M (2010) Reducing child mortality in Indonesia. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 88, 642–642.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
UNICEF (2015 a) Unless we act now. The impact of climate change on children. United Nations Children's Fund. Available at https://www.unicef.org/publications/index_86337.html.Google Scholar
UNICEF (2015 b) Committing to Child Survival: A Promise Renewed. Progress Report 2015.United Nations Children's Fund. Available at https://www.unicef.org/publications/files/APR_2015_9_Sep_15.pdf.Google Scholar
Vogl, TS (2014) Height, skills, and labor market outcomes in Mexico. Journal of Development Economics 107, 84–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
World Bank (2014) Risk and Opportunity, World Development Report. Washington, DC: The World Bank.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Thamarapani supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Thamarapani supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 540.8 KB