Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T09:27:13.092Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Malnutrition pathway for the impact of in utero drought shock on child growth indicators in rural households

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2021

Olukorede Abiona Open the ORCID record for Olukorede Abiona [Opens in a new window]
Olukorede Abiona*
Affiliation:
UTS Business School, Centre for Health Economic Research and Evaluation, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper evaluates the short-term health effects of in utero drought shock using repeated cross-section household data on Malawi. The main finding reveals that the effects of in utero harvest variability caused by rainfall shocks on child growth indices are driven by the deleterious effects of negative rainfall deviations, namely droughts. Negative rainfall deviation during the agricultural season prior to the gestational period of a child leads to a 21.8 per cent average local level reduction in age-standardized height scores, with the counterpart positive rainfall deviation having no apparent effect. The paper also uses harvest and consumption patterns to establish an important link between early-life malnutrition and growth serving as a precursor for the fetal period programming hypothesis in the literature. The direct impact of embryonic period shocks on growth provides supportive evidence on potential interaction between nutritional and environmental pathways.

Keywords

child growthdroughtin uteronutrition

JEL classification

I12: Health Behavior I15: Health and Economic Development
Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , February 2022 , pp. 20 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. 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

Abu-Saad, K and Fraser, D (2010) Maternal nutrition and birth outcomes. Epidemiologic Reviews 32, 5–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Alderman, H, Hoddinott, J and Kinsey, B (2006) Long-term consequences of early childhood malnutrition. Oxford Economic Papers 58, 450–474.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alderman, H, Hoogeveen, H and Rossi, M (2009) Preschool nutrition and subsequent schooling attainment: longitudinal evidence from Tanzania. Economic Development and Cultural Change 57, 239–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Almond, D (2006) Is the 1918 influenza pandemic over? Long-term effects of in Utero influenza exposure in the post-1940 US population. Journal of Political Economy 114, 672–712.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, Edlund, L and Palme, M (2009) Chernobyl's subclinical legacy: prenatal exposure to radioactive fallout and school outcomes in Sweden. Quarterly Journal of Economics 124, 1729–1772.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ampaabeng, SK and Tan, CM (2013) The long-term cognitive consequences of early childhood malnutrition: the case of famine in Ghana. Journal of Health Economics 32, 1013–1027.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Banerjee, R and Maharaj, R (2020) Heat, infant mortality, and adaptation: evidence from India. Journal of Development Economics 143, article 102378. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2019.102378.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barreca, AI, Deschenes, O and Guldi, M (2015) Maybe next month? Temperature shocks, climate change, and dynamic adjustments in birth rates. IZA Discussion Papers 9480, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bertoni, B (2015) Hungry today, unhappy tomorrow? Childhood hunger and subjective wellbeing later in life. Journal of Health Economics 40, 40–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beuermann, D and Pecha, CJ (2020) The effects of weather shocks on early childhood development: evidence from 25 years of tropical storms in Jamaica Economics & Human Biology 37, article 100851. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2020.100851.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Björkman-Nyqvist, M (2013) Income shocks and gender gaps in education: evidence from Uganda. Journal of Development Economics 105, 237–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caruso, G 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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaurey, R (2015) Labor regulations and contract labor use: evidence from Indian firms. Journal of Development Economics 114, 224–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comfort, AB (2016) Long-term effect of in utero conditions on maternal survival later in life: evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa. Journal of Population Economics 29, 493–527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Currie, J and Rossin-Slater, M (2013) Weathering the storm: hurricanes and birth outcomes. Journal of Health Economics 32, 487–503.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dercon, S and Porter, C (2014) Live aid revisited: long-term impacts of the 1984 Ethiopian famine on children. Journal of the European Economic Association 12, 927–948.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
De Vreyer, P, Guilbert, N and Mesple-Somps, S (2015) Impact of natural disasters on education outcomes: evidence from the 1987–89 locust plague in Mali. Journal of African Economies 24, 57–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Weerdt, J and Dercon, S (2006) Risk-sharing networks and insurance against illness. Journal of Development Economics 81, 337–356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fafchamps, M, Udry, C and Czukas, K (1998) Drought and saving in West Africa: are livestock a buffer stock? Journal of Development Economics 55, 273–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flores, M and Kalwij, A (2014) The associations between early life circumstances and later life health and employment in Europe. Empirical Economics 47, 1251–1282.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
Gould, ED, Lavy, V and Paserman, MD (2011) Sixty years after the magic carpet ride: the long-run effect of the early childhood environment on social and economic outcomes. Review of Economic Studies 78, 938–973.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hancock, PA, Ross, JM and Szalma, JL (2007) A meta-analysis of performance response under thermal stressors. Human Factors 49, 851–877.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hidrobo, M (2014) The effect of Ecuador's 1999 economic crisis on early childhood development. Economic Development and Cultural Change 62, 633–671.CrossRefGoogle 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
Isen, A, Maya, R-S and Walker, WR (2017) Relationship between season of birth, temperature exposure, and later life wellbeing. PNAS 114, 13447–13452.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Islam, A and Maitra, P (2012) Health shocks and consumption smoothing in rural households: does microcredit have a role to play? Journal of Development Economics 97, 232–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Justino, P, Leone, M and Salardi, P (2014) Short-and long-term impact of violence on education: the case of Timor Leste. World Bank Economic Review 28, 320–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kazianga, H and Udry, C (2006) Consumption smoothing? Livestock, insurance and drought in rural Burkina Faso. Journal of Development Economics 79, 413–446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lehmann, H and Wadsworth, J (2011) The impact of chernobyl on health and labour market performance. Journal of Health Economics 30, 843–857.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leroy, JL (2011) zscore06: Stata command for the calculation of anthropometric Z-scores using the 2006 WHO child growth standards. Available at http://www.ifpri.org/staffprofile/jef-leroy.Google 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
Maluccio, JA, Hoddinott, J, Behrman, JR, Martorell, R, Quisumbing, AR and Stein, AD (2009) The impact of improving nutrition during early childhood on education among Guatemalan adults. The Economic Journal 119, 734–763.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matsuura, K and Willmott, C (2017) Terrestrial air temperature and precipitation: 1900–2017. Gridded Monthly Time Series Version 5, 01, Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware.Google Scholar
Molina, O and Saldarriaga, V (2017) The perils of climate change: in utero exposure to temperature variability and birth outcomes in the Andean region. Economics & Human Biology 24, 111–124.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Neelsen, S and Stratmann, T (2011) Effects of prenatal and early life malnutrition: evidence from the Greek famine. Journal of Health Economics 30, 479–488.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rabassa, M, Skoufias, E and Jacoby, H (2014) Weather and child health in rural Nigeria. Journal of African Economies 23, 464–492.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rocha, R and Soares, RR (2015) Water scarcity and birth outcomes in the Brazilian semiarid. Journal of Development Economics 112, 72–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sotomayor, O (2013) Fetal and infant origins of diabetes and ill health: evidence from Puerto Rico's 1928 and 1932 hurricanes. Economics & Human Biology 11, 281–293.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thai, TQ and Falaris, EM (2014) Child schooling, child health, and rainfall shocks: evidence from rural Vietnam. Journal of Development Studies 50, 1025–1037.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilde, J, Apouey, B and Jung, T (2014) Heat waves at conception and later life outcomes. Working Papers 0514, University of South Florida, Department of Economics.Google Scholar
Wu, G, Bazer, FW, Cudd, TA, Meininger, CJ and Spencer, TE (2004) Maternal nutrition and fetal development. Journal of Nutrition 134, 2169–2172.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yamano, T, Alderman, H and Christiaensen, L (2005) Child growth, shocks, and food aid in rural Ethiopia. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 87, 273–288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yamauchi, F (2008) Early childhood nutrition, schooling, and sibling inequality in a dynamic context: evidence from South Africa. Economic Development and Cultural Change 56, 657–682.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhu, MJ, Ford, SP, Means, WJ, Hess, BW, Nathanielsz, PW and Du, M (2006) Maternal nutrient restriction affects properties of skeletal muscle in offspring. Journal of Physiology 575, 241–250.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Supplementary material: PDF

Abiona supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Abiona supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 171.8 KB