Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T12:59:23.589Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Climate impacts on nutrition and labor supply disentangled – an analysis for rural areas of Uganda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2020

Chiara Antonelli Open the ORCID record for Chiara Antonelli [Opens in a new window] ,
Manuela Coromaldi Open the ORCID record for Manuela Coromaldi [Opens in a new window] ,
Shouro Dasgupta Open the ORCID record for Shouro Dasgupta [Opens in a new window] ,
Johannes Emmerling Open the ORCID record for Johannes Emmerling [Opens in a new window]  and
Soheil Shayegh Open the ORCID record for Soheil Shayegh [Opens in a new window]
Chiara Antonelli
Affiliation:
University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy
Manuela Coromaldi*
Affiliation:
University of Rome Niccoló Cusano, Rome, Italy
Shouro Dasgupta
Affiliation:
Fondazione CMCC, Venice, Italy
Johannes Emmerling
Affiliation:
Fondazione CMCC, Venice, Italy
Soheil Shayegh
Affiliation:
Fondazione CMCC, Venice, Italy Bocconi University, Milan, Italy
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The entire agricultural supply chain, from crop production to food consumption, is expected to suffer significant damages from climate change. This paper empirically investigates the effects of warming on agricultural labor supply through variation in dietary intake in rural Uganda. We examine labor supply, food consumption, and overall social welfare under various climate change scenarios. First, we combine nationally representative longitudinal survey data with high-resolution climatic data using an instrumental variable approach. Controlling for calorie intake, our study shows that warming has a non-linear impact on agricultural labor supply, with the number of hours worked being optimized at an optimal temperature of 21.3°C. Using these econometric estimates to parametrize an overlapping generations model, we find that under RCP8.5, output per adult decreases by 20 per cent by the end of the century due to the combined effect of climate change on food consumption and labor supply.

Keywords

food consumptionfood securityclimate impactsclimate changelabor supplywelfare
Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 26 , Special Issue 5-6: Weather and Climate Impacts in Developing Countries , October 2021 , pp. 512 - 537
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

Angrist, JD and Krueger, AB (2001) Instrumental variables and the search for identification: from supply and demand to natural experiments. Journal of Economic Perspectives 15, 69–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aziz, F (1995) Nutrition, health and labor productivity analysis of male and female workers: a test of the efficiency wage hypothesis. Bulletin Number 95-5. St. Paul: Economic Development Center, University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Baah-Boatenga, W, Nketiah-Amponsah, E and Frempong, R (2013) The effect of fertility and education on female labour force participation in Ghana. Ghanaian Journal of Economics 1, 119–137.Google Scholar
Barrios, S, Bertinelli, L and Strobl, E (2010) Trends in rainfall and economic growth in Africa: a neglected cause of the African growth tragedy. The Review of Economics and Statistics 92, 350–366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, GS and Barro, RJ (1988) A reformulation of the economic theory of fertility. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 103, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bezabih, M and Sarr, M (2012) Risk preferences and environmental uncertainty: implications for crop diversification decisions in Ethiopia. Environmental and Resource Economics 53, 483–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, R, Bennett, SR, Thomas, SM and Beddington, JR (2011) Climate change: migration as adaptation. Nature 478, 447–449.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brobeck, JR (1948) Food intake as a mechanism of temperature regulation. Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 20, 545–552.Google ScholarPubMed
Brückner, M and Ciccone, A (2011) Rain and the democratic window of opportunity. Econometrica 79, 923–947.Google Scholar
Brzoska, M and Fröhlich, C (2016) Climate change, migration and violent conflict: vulnerabilities, pathways and adaptation strategies. Migration and Development 5, 190–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burke, M and Emerick, K (2016) Adaptation to climate change: evidence from US agriculture. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 8, 106–140.Google Scholar
Burke, M, Hsiang, SM and Miguel, E (2015) Global non-linear effect of temperature on economic production. Nature 527, 235.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carletto, C, Zezza, A and Banerjee, R (2013) Towards better measurement of household food security: harmonizing indicators and the role of household surveys. Global Food Security 2, 30–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Case, A and Paxson, C (2008) Stature and status: height, ability, and labor market outcomes. Journal of Political Economy 116, 499–532.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caselli, F and Coleman, WJ (2001) The U.S. structural transformation and regional convergence: a reinterpretation. Journal of Political Economy 109, 584–616.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casey, G, Shayegh, S, Moreno-Cruz, J, Bunzl, M, Galor, O and Caldeira, K (2019) The impact of climate change on fertility. Environmental Research Letters 14, 054007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Claro, RM, Levy, RB, Bandoni, DH and Mondini, L (2010) Per capita versus adult equivalent estimates of calorie availability in household budget surveys. Cadernos de Saude Publica 26, 2188–2195.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Croppenstedt, A and Muller, C (2000) The impact of farmers' health and nutritional status on their productivity and efficiency: evidence from Ethiopia. Economic Development and Cultural Change 48, 475–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dasgupta, S (2018) Burden of climate change on malaria mortality. International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health 221, 782–791.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Davis, TR (1964) The influence of climate on nutritional requirements. American Journal of Public Health 54, 2051–2067.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dell, M, Jones, BF and Olken, BA (2014) What do we learn from the weather? The new climate-economy literature. Journal of Economic Literature 52, 740–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deolalikar, AB (1988) Nutrition and labor productivity in agriculture: estimates for rural south India. The Review of Economics and Statistics 67, 406–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desmet, K and Rossi-Hansberg, E (2015) On the spatial economic impact of global warming. Journal of Urban Economics 88, 16–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diamond, PA (1965) National debt in a neoclassical growth model. American Economic Review 55, 1126–1150.Google Scholar
di Giovanni, J, Levchenko, AA and Ortega, F (2015) A global view of cross-border migration. Journal of the European Economic Association 13, 168–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dillon, A, McGee, K and Oseni, G (2015) Agricultural production, dietary diversity and climate variability. The Journal of Development Studies 51, 976–995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, DC and McKee, TB (1997) Characteristics of 20th century drought in the United States at multiple time scales. Climatology Report Number 97-2. Fort Collins, CO: Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University.Google Scholar
Fankhauser, S and Tol, RS (2005) On climate change and economic growth. Resource and Energy Economics 27, 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
FANTA-2 (2010) The Analysis of the Nutrition Situation in Uganda. Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance II Project (Fanta-2). Washington, DC: FHI 360.Google Scholar
FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO (2018) The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018. Building Climate Resilience for Food Security and Nutrition. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).Google Scholar
Fink, G, Jack, BK and Masiye, F (2014) Seasonal credit constraints and agricultural labor supply: evidence from Zambia (Technical Report). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galor, O (2011) Unified Growth Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gao, J and Mills, BF (2018) Weather shocks, coping strategies, and consumption dynamics in rural Ethiopia. World Development 101, 268–283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gollin, D, Lagakos, D and Waugh, ME (2014) The agricultural productivity gap. Quarterly Journal of Economics 129, 939–993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graff Zivin, J and Neidell, M (2014) Temperature and the allocation of time: implications for climate change. Journal of Labor Economics 32, 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graff Zivin, J, Hsiang, SM and Neidell, M (2018) Temperature and human capital in the short and long run. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists 5, 77–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harttgen, K and Klasen, S (2012) Analyzing nutritional impacts of price and income related shocks in Malawi and Uganda. Working Paper 2012–2014. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: United Nations Development Programme.Google Scholar
Hoddinott, J and Kinsey, B (2001) Child growth in the time of drought. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 63, 409–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hsiang, SM (2010) Temperatures and cyclones strongly associated with economic production in the Caribbean and Central America. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 107, 15367–15372.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ibrahim, MP and Alex, RS (2008) The impact of changing environmental conditions on vulnerable communities in the Shire Valley, Southern Malawi. In Lee, C and Schaaf, T (eds), The Future of Drylands. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, pp. 545–559.Google Scholar
Jha, R, Gaiha, R and Sharma, A (2009) Calorie and micronutrient deprivation and poverty nutrition traps in rural India. World Development 37, 982–991.Google Scholar
Kjellstrom, T, Kovats, RS, Lloyd, SJ, Holt, T and Tol, RSJ (2009) The direct impact of climate change on regional labor productivity. Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health 64, 217–227.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Linderhof, V, Powell, J, Vignes, R and Ruben, R (2016) The influence of household farming systems on dietary diversity and caloric intake: the case of Uganda. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference of the African Association of Agricultural Economists, Addis Ababa, 23-26 September, 2016.Google Scholar
Lutz, W, Butz, WP and Samir, K (2014) World Population and Human Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, JJ, Canziani, OF, Leary, NA, Dokken, DJ and White, KS (2001) Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Vol. 2. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Miguel, E, Satyanath, S and Sergenti, E (2004) Economic shocks and civil conflict: an instrumental variables approach. Journal of Political Economy 112, 725–753.Google Scholar
Mistry, MN (2019a) A high-resolution (0.25 degree) historical global gridded dataset of climate extreme indices (1970–2016) using GLDAS data. Supplement to Mistry, MN (2019), A high resolution global gridded historical dataset of climate extreme indices. Data 4. doi:10.3390/data4010041.Google Scholar
Mistry, MN (2019b) A high-resolution global gridded historical dataset of climate extreme indices. Data 4, 41.Google Scholar
Moss, RH, Edmonds, JA, Hibbard, KA, Manning, MR, Rose, SK, van Vuuren, DP, Carter, TR, Emori, S, Kainuma, M, Kram, T, Meehl, GA, Mitchell, JFB, Nakicenovic, N, Riahi, K, Smith, SJ, Stouffer, RJ, Thomson, AM, Weyant, JP and Wilbanks, TJ (2010) The next generation of scenarios for climate change research and assessment. Nature 463, 747–756.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Myers, SS, Smith, MR, Guth, S, Golden, CD, Vaitla, B, Mueller, ND, Dangour, AD and Huybers, P (2017) Climate change and global food systems: potential impacts on food security and undernutrition. Annual Review of Public Health 38, 259–277.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
National Research Council (US) Committee on Diet and Health (1989) Diet and Health: Implications for Reducing Chronic Disease Risk. Washington, DC: National Academies Press (US).Google Scholar
Oseni, G, Durazo, J and McGee, K (2017) The Use of Non-Standard Units for the Collection of Food Quantity: A Guidebook for Improving the Measurement of Food Consumption and Agricultural Production in Living Standards Surveys. The LSMS Guidebook Series. Washington, DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Pachauri, RK, Allen, MR, Barros, VR, Broome, J and Cramer, W (2014) Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC.Google Scholar
Parry, ML, Rosenzweig, C, Iglesias, A, Livermore, M and Fischer, G (2004) Effects of climate change on global food production under SRES emissions and socio-economic scenarios. Global Environmental Change 14, 53–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearce, DW, Cline, WR, Achanta, AN, Fankhauser, S, Pachauri, RK, Tol, RS and Vellinga, P (1996) The social costs of climate change: greenhouse damage and the benefits of control. In Bruce, JP, Lee, H and Haites, EF (eds), Climate Change 1995: Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate Change – Contribution of Working Group III to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 179–224.Google Scholar
Phalkey, RK, Aranda-Jan, C, Marx, S, Höfle, B and Sauerborn, R (2015) Systematic review of current efforts to quantify the impacts of climate change on undernutrition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 112, E4522–E4529.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Riahi, K, van Vuuren, DP, Kriegler, E, Edmonds, J, O'Neill, BC, Fujimori, S, Bauer, N, Calvin, K, Dellink, R, Fricko, O, Lutz, W, Popp, A, Cuaresma, JC, KC, S, Leimbach, M, Jiang, L, Kram, T, Rao, S, Emmerling, J, Ebi, K, Hasegawa, T, Havlik, P, Humpenöder, F, Da Silva, LA, Smith, S, Stehfest, E, Bosetti, V, Eom, J, Gernaat, D, Masui, T, Rogelj, J, Strefler, J, Drouet, L, Krey, V, Luderer, G, Harmsen, M, Takahashi, K, Baumstark, L, Doelman, JC, Kainuma, M, Klimont, Z, Marangoni, G, Lotze-Campen, H, Obersteiner, M, Tabeau, A and Tavoni, M (2017) The shared socioeconomic pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications: an overview. Global Environmental Change 42, 153–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodell, M, Houser, PR, Jambor, U, Gottschalck, J, Mitchell, K, Meng, C-J, Arsenault, K, Cosgrove, B, Radakovich, J, Bosilovich, M, Entin, JK, Walker, JP, Lohmann, D and Toll, D (2004) The global land data assimilation system. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 85, 381–394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shayegh, S (2017) Outward migration may alter population dynamics and income inequality. Nature Climate Change 7, 828.Google Scholar
Shiferaw, B, Tesfaye, K, Kassie, M, Abate, T, Prasanna, B and Menkir, A (2014) Managing vulnerability to drought and enhancing livelihood resilience in sub-Saharan Africa: technological, institutional and policy options. Weather and Climate Extremes 3, 67–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skoufias, E, Vinha, K and Conroy, HV (2011) The impacts of climate variability on welfare in rural Mexico. Policy Research working paper no. WPS 5555. Washington, DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Ssewanyana, SN and Kasirye, I (2010) Food insecurity in Uganda: a dilemma to achieving the Hunger millennium development goal. Economic Policy Research Centre, Research Series No. 70. Kampala, Uganda.Google Scholar
Strauss, J (1986) Does better nutrition raise farm productivity? Journal of Political Economy 94, 297–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, D and Frankenberg, E (2002) Health, nutrition and prosperity: a microeconomic perspective. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 80, 106–113.Google ScholarPubMed
Turyahabwe, N, Kakuru, W, Tweheyo, M and Tumusiime, DM (2013) Contribution of wetland resources to household food security in Uganda. Agriculture & Food Security 2, article 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinberger, K (2004) Micronutrient intake and labour productivity: evidence from a consumption and income survey among Indian agricultural labourers. Outlook on Agriculture 33, 255–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westerter, K (2017) Control of energy expenditure in humans. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 71, 340–344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheeler, T and Von Braun, J (2013) Climate change impacts on global food security. Science 341, 508–513.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
World Meteorological Organization (WMO) (2012) Standardized precipitation index user guide. Geneva, Switzerland: World Meteorological Organization. Available at http://www.wamis.org/agm/pubs/SPI/WMO_1090_EN.pdf.Google Scholar