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Famine at birth: long-term health effects of the 1974–75 Bangladesh famine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2024

Shaikh M. S. U. Eskander Open the ORCID record for Shaikh M. S. U. Eskander [Opens in a new window]  and
Edward B. Barbier
Shaikh M. S. U. Eskander*
Affiliation:
Department of Health Policy and Organization, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL, USA Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment (GRI) and Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP), London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
Edward B. Barbier
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA
*
*Corresponding author: Shaikh M. S. U. Eskander; Email: Eskander@uab.edu
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Abstract

We use childhood exposure to disasters as a natural experiment inducing variations in adulthood outcomes. Following the fetal origin hypothesis, we hypothesize that children from households with greater famine exposure will have poorer health outcomes. Employing a unique dataset from Bangladesh, we test this hypothesis for the 1974–75 famine that was largely caused by increased differences between the price of coarse rice and agricultural wages, together with the lack of entitlement to foodgrains for daily wage earners. People from northern regions of Bangladesh were unequally affected by this famine that spanned several months in 1974 and 1975. We find that children surviving the 1974–75 famine have lower health outcomes during their adulthood. Due to the long-lasting effects of such adverse events and their apparent human capital and growth implications, it is important to enact and enforce public policies aimed at ameliorating the immediate harms of such events through helping the poor.

Keywords

Bangladeshfetal origin hypothesisthe 1974–75 Bangladesh faminehealthlong-term effects

JEL classification

Q54: Climate • Natural Disasters and Their Management • Global Warming O15: Human Resources • Human Development • Income Distribution • Migration I31: General Welfare, Well-Being

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , June 2025 , pp. 220 - 240
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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