Lack of Food Access and Double Catastrophe in Early Life: Lessons from the 1974–1975 Bangladesh Famine

Shabnam, Nourin and Guven, Cahit and Ulubasoglu, Mehmet (2021): Lack of Food Access and Double Catastrophe in Early Life: Lessons from the 1974–1975 Bangladesh Famine.

Abstract

We study the education outcomes of the 1974–1975 Bangladesh famine on early-life survivors using the 1991 Bangladesh microcensus data. We find that famine adversely affected the survivor children in areas that experienced higher rice prices relative to labour wage. In addition, children living in wealthy households in famine-stricken areas had better education outcomes than children with no famine exposure at all. We also find that, surprisingly, exposure to double catastrophe (i.e., concurrent famine and flood) in early life had weaker effects than exposure to single catastrophe. We show that disaster-alleviation mechanisms worked better in districts affected by double disasters.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: The 1974–1975 Bangladesh Famine; Food Access; Early Life Malnutrition; Education Outcomes; Double Catastrophe
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I15 - Health and Economic Development; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions > I25 - Education and Economic Development; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J13 - Fertility ; Family Planning ; Child Care ; Children ; Youth; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor > J24 - Human Capital ; Skills ; Occupational Choice ; Labor Productivity

References

Alamgir, M. (1980). Famine in South Asia. Political economy of mass starvation. Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain, Publishers, Inc.

Alamgir, M., & Salimullah. (1977). Famine, 1974: Political economy of mass starvation in Bangladesh: A statistical annexe. Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, Dacca.

Alderman, H. (1996). Saving and economic shocks in rural Pakistan. Journal of Development Economics, 51(2), 343-365.

Alderman, H., Hoddinott, J., & Kinsey, B. (2006). Long-term consequences of early-childhood malnutrition. Oxford Economic Papers, 58(3), 450-474.

Alderman, K., Turner, L. R., & Tong, S. (2012). Floods and human health: a systematic review. Environment International, 47, 37-47.

Almond, D., & Mazumder, B. (2005). The 1918 influenza pandemic and subsequent health outcomes: an analysis of SIPP data. Papers and Proceedings of the One Hundred Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, Philadelphia, PA, January 7–9. American Economic Review, 258-262.

Almond, D., Edlund, L., Li, H., & Zhang, J. (2007). Long-term effects of the 1959-1961 China famine: Mainland China and Hong Kong (No. w13384). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Ampaabeng, S. K., & Tan, C. M. (2013). The long-term cognitive consequences of early childhood malnutrition: the case of famine in Ghana. Journal of Health Economics, 32(6), 1013-1027.

Barker, D. J. (1998). In utero programming of chronic disease. Clinical Science (London, England: 1979), 95(2), 115-128.

Barker, D. J. P. (1994). Mothers, babies, and disease in later life. London. British Medical Journal Publishing, 7(5), 673-674.

Barro, R. J., & Lee, J. W. (1996). International measures of schooling years and schooling quality. The American Economic Review, 86(2), 218-223.

Baten, J., Crayen, D., & Voth, H. J. (2014). Numeracy and the impact of high food prices in industrializing Britain, 1780–1850. Review of Economics and Statistics, 96(3), 418-430.

Bleakley, H. (2010). Health, human capital, and development. Annual Review of Economics, 2, 283.

Bryce, J., Coitinho, D., Darnton-Hill, I., Pelletier, D., Pinstrup-Andersen, P., & Maternal and Child Undernutrition Study Group. (2008). Maternal and child undernutrition: effective action at national level. The Lancet, 371(9611), 510-526.

Chen, Y., & Zhou, L. A. (2007). The long-term health and economic consequences of the 1959–1961 famine in China. Journal of Health Economics, 26(4), 659-681.

Chowdhury, A. K., & Chen, L. C. (1977). The dynamics of contemporary famine. Ford Foundation, Dacca.

Currey, B., & Hugo, G. (Eds.). (2012). Famine: As a geographical phenomenon, 1. Springer Science & Business Media.

Davis, L. A. (2010). Natural disasters. Infobase Publishing.

Del Ninno, C., & Lundberg, M. (2005). Treading water: the long-term impact of the 1998 flood on nutrition in Bangladesh. Economics & Human Biology, 3(1), 67-96.

Desai, V., (2012). Importance of literacy in India’s Economic Growth. International Journal of Economics and Research, 3(2), 112-124.

Doblhammer-Reiter, G., Van den Berg, G. J., & Lumey, L. (2011). Long-term effects of famine on life expectancy: A re-analysis of the Great Finnish Famine of 1866-1868. IZA Discussion Papers, 5534.

Dyson, T. (1991). On the demography of South Asian famines part I. Population Studies, 45(1), 5-25.

Ellison, P. T. (2005). Evolutionary perspectives on the fetal origins hypothesis. American Journal of Human Biology, 17(1), 113-118.

EM-DAT (2011). Disaster Profiles. The OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database. Brussels: Universite´ Catholique de Louvain, retrived from: http://www.emdat.net.

Fan, W., & Qian, Y. (2015). Long-term health and socioeconomic consequences of early-life exposure to the 1959–1961 Chinese famine. Social Science Research, 49, 53-69.

Gooch, E. (2017). Estimating the long-term impact of the Great Chinese Famine (1959–61) on modern China. World Development, 89, 140-151.

Gørgens, T., Meng, X., & Vaithianathan, R. (2012). Stunting and selection effects of famine: A case study of the Great Chinese Famine. Journal of Development Economics, 97(1), 99-111.

Goudet, S. M., Faiz, S., Bogin, B. A., & Griffiths, P. L. (2011). Pregnant women's and community health workers' perceptions of root causes of malnutrition among infants and young children in the slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh. American Journal of Public Health, 101(7), 1225-1233.

Hernández-Julián, R., Mansour, H., & Peters, C. (2014). The effects of intrauterine malnutrition on birth and fertility outcomes: evidence from the 1974 Bangladesh famine. Demography, 51(5), 1775-1796.

Hofer, T., & Messerli, B. (2002). Floods in Bangladesh: History, dynamics and rethinking the role of the Himalayas. Ecology, 29, 254-283.

Hossain, D. M. (2013). Socioeconomic situation of the indigenous people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh. Middle East Journal of Business, 8(2), 22-30.

Huang, W & Zhou, Y 2013. Effects of education on cognition at older ages: Evidence from China’s Great Famine. Social Science & Medicine vol. 98, pp. 54–62.

Islam, A., Ouch, C., Smyth, R., & Wang, L. C (2017). The intergenerational impact of conflict on human development: Evidence from Cambodia’s genocide, Population and Development Review, 43(2):331-353.

Islam, A., Ouch, C., Smyth, R., & Wang, L. C. (2016). The long-term effects of civil conflicts on education, earnings, and fertility: Evidence from Cambodia. Journal of Comparative Economics, 44(3), 800-820.

Kagy, G. (2012). Long-run impacts of famine exposure: A study of the 1974-1975 Bangladesh famine. Working Paper.

Kalaitzidakis, P., Mamuneas, T. P., Savvides, A., & Stengos, T. (2001). Measures of human capital and nonlinearities in economic growth. Journal of Economic Growth, 6(3), 229-254.

Kim, S., Deng, Q., Fleisher, B. M., & Li, S. 2014. The lasting impact of parental early life malnutrition on their offspring: Evidence from the China Great Leap Forward Famine. World Development 54, 232-242.

Kim, S., Fleisher, B. and Sun, J.Y., 2017. The Long-term health effects of fetal malnutrition: Evidence from the 1959–1961 China Great Leap Forward Famine. Health Economics 26(10), pp.1264-1277.

Leiva, P. B., Inzunza, B. N., Pérez, T. H., Castro, G. V., Jansana, M. J., Toro, D. T., & Ivanovic, M. D. (2001). The impact of malnutrition on brain development, intelligence and school work performance. Archivos latinoamericanos de nutricion, 51(1), 64-71.

Lin, J.Y. & D.T. Yang, 2000. Food Availability, Entitlements and the Chinese Famine of 1959–61, Economic Journal, (110): 460, 136–158.

Madsen, J. (2018). Health-Led Growth in the OECD since 1800. Macroeconomic Dynamics, 22(4): 961-1000.

Mankiw, G.N., Romer, D., Weil, D. (1992). A contribution to the empirics of economic growth. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107 (2), 407–437.

Meng, X., & Qian, N. (2009). The long-term consequences of famine on survivors: evidence from a unique natural experiment using China's great famine (No. w14917). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Meng, X., Qian, N., & Yared, P. (2015). The institutional causes of China's great famine: 1959-1961. Review of Economic Studies, 82, 1568-1611.

Minnesota Population Center, (2014). Integrated public use microdata series, international: version 6.3 [Machine-readable database]. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Available from: https://international.ipums.org/international/citation.shtml.

Molina, H. (2012). The review of health and nutrition indicators in early-childhood. Report, UNESCO, Paris.

Muqtada, M. (1981). Poverty and famines in Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Development Studies, 1-34.

Mustafi, B. A. A., & Azad, M. S. (2003). The 1998 flood: losses and damages of agricultural production in Bangladesh. J Biol Sci, 3(2), 147-156.

Nabi, A.N., (1992). Dynamics of internal migration in Bangladesh. Canadian Studies in Population, 19(1), pp.81-98.

Neelsen, S., & Stratmann, T. (2011). Effects of prenatal and early life malnutrition: Evidence from the Greek famine. Journal of Health Economics, 30(3), 479-488.

Quddus, M., & Becker, C. M. (2000). Speculative price bubbles in the rice market and the 1974 Bangladesh famine. Journal of Economic Development.

Rayhan, M. I. (2010). Assessing poverty, risk and vulnerability: a study on flooded households in rural Bangladesh. Journal of Flood Risk Management, 3(1), 18-24.

Ravallion, M. (1985). The Performance of Rice Markets in Bangladesh During the 1975 Famine. Economic Journal. 95, 15-29.

Ravallion, M. (1987). Markets and Famines. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ravallion, M. (1997). Famines and Economics. Journal of Economic Literature. 35: 1205-1242.

Razzaque, A., N. Alam, L. Wai, and A. Foster. Sustained effects of the 1974–5 famine on infant and child mortality in a rural area of Bangladesh. Population Studies 44, no. 1 (1990): 145-154.

Scholte, R., van den Berg, G. J. & Lindeboom, M. (2015). Long-run effects of gestation during the Dutch Hunger Winter famine on labour market and hospitalization outcomes. Journal of Health Economics, 39, 17–30.

Sen, A. (1981). Ingredients of famine analysis: availability and entitlements. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 96(3), 433-464.

Siddique, I. Quamrul and H.C. Monowar, (2000). Flood ’98: Losses and Damages. A seminar on Flood’98 held in Dhaka in December, 1998.

Song, S. (2009). Does famine have a long-term effect on cohort mortality? Evidence from the 1959–1961 Great Leap Forward famine in China. Journal of Biosocial Science, 41(04), 469-491.

Van Schendel, W. (2009). A history of Bangladesh. Cambridge University Press.

Victora, C. G., Adair, L., Fall, C., Hallal, P. C., Martorell, R., Richter, L., ... & Maternal and Child Undernutrition Study Group. (2008). Maternal and child undernutrition: consequences for adult health and human capital. The Lancet, 371(9609), 340-357.

Walker, S. P., Wachs, T. D., Gardner, J. M., Lozoff, B., Wasserman, G. A., Pollitt, E., Carter, J.A., & International Child Development Steering Group. (2007). Child development: risk factors for adverse outcomes in developing countries. The Lancet, 369(9556), 145-157.