In-utero Exposure to Rainfall Variability and Early Childhood Health

Le, Kien and Nguyen, My (2019): In-utero Exposure to Rainfall Variability and Early Childhood Health.

Abstract

Climate change has drastically altered precipitation patterns across the globe and has caused an increase in rainfall variability, including the incidence of extreme rainfall events such as droughts and floods. Exploiting the exogenous variation in rainfall to which children were exposed during the nine months in utero, we find that rainfall variability adversely affects the anthropometric status of children under five years of age in 55 low and middle-income countries. Moreover, the consequences of fetal exposure to rainfall variability are strongly apparent in the child’s first year of life and linger to some extent at later ages. Our heterogeneity analyses further show that children of disadvantaged backgrounds, such as poor and uneducated households, are especially vulnerable to rainfall variability during gestation.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Child Health; Rainfall; Climate Change
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics

References

Akombi, B. J., Agho, K. E., Hall, J. J., Wali, N., Renzaho, A., & Merom, D. (2017). Stunting, wasting and underweight in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 14 (8), 863.

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.

Myhre, G., Alterskjr, K., Stjern, C. W., Hodnebrog, ., Marelle, L., Samset, B. H., ... & Stohl, A. (2019). Frequency of extreme precipitation increases extensively with event rareness under global warming. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 1-10.

Le, K., & Nguyen, M. (2021). The psychological consequences of COVID-19 lockdowns. International Review of Applied Economics, 35(2), 147-163.

Woldemichael, A., Kidane, D., & Shimeles, A. (2017). A Tax on Children? Food Price Inflation and Health (No. 276). African Development Bank Working Paper Series.

Muttarak, R., Lutz, W., & Jiang, L. (2015). What can demographers contribute to the study of vulnerability?. Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, 13, 1-13.

Barker, D. J. (1990). The fetal and infant origins of adult disease. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 301 (6761), 1111.

United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organization, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank. Levels and trends in child malnutrition: Key Findings of the 2020 Edition of the Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2020.

Le, K., & Nguyen, M. (2021). The impacts of temperature shocks on birth weight in Vietnam. Population and Development Review.

Alexander, L. V. (2016). Global observed long-term changes in temperature and precipitation extremes: a review of progress and limitations in IPCC assessments and beyond.Weather and Climate Extremes, 11, 4-16.

Vanden Eynde, O. (2018). Targets of violence: Evidence from indias naxalite conflict. The Economic Journal, 128 (609), 887-916.

Vogel, E., Donat, M. G., Alexander, L. V., Meinshausen, M., Ray, D. K., Karoly, D., ... & Frieler, K. (2019). The effects of climate extremes on global agricultural yields. Environmental Research Letters, 14 (5), 054010.

Bjorkman-Nyqvist, M. (2013). Income shocks and gender gaps in education: Evidence from Uganda. Journal of Development Economics, 105, 237-253.

Le, K., & Nguyen, M. (2021). The psychological burden of the COVID-19 pandemic severity. Economics & Human Biology, 41, 100979.

Almond, D., & Currie, J. (2011). Killing me softly: The fetal origins hypothesis. Journal of economic perspectives, 25 (3), 153-72.

Skoufias, E., & Vinha, K. (2012). Climate variability and child height in rural Mexico. Economics & Human Biology, 10 (1), 54-73.

Umbers, A. J., Aitken, E. H., & Rogerson, S. J. (2011). Malaria in pregnancy: small babies, big problem. Trends in Parasitology, 27 (4), 168-175.

Black, S. E., Devereux, P. J., & Salvanes, K. G. (2016). Does grief transfer across generations? Bereavements during pregnancy and child outcomes. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 8 (1), 193-223.

Le, K., & Nguyen, M. (2021). Education and political engagement. International Journal of Educational Development, 85, 102441.

Cooper, M. W., Brown, M. E., Hochrainer-Stigler, S., Pflug, G., McCallum, I., Fritz, S., ... & Zvoleff, A. (2019). Mapping the effects of drought on child stunting. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116 (35), 17219-17224.

Schulz, L. C. (2010). The Dutch Hunger Winter and the developmental origins of health and disease. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107 (39), 16757-16758.

United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF). (2014). Multi-sectoral approaches to nutrition: nutrition-specific and nutritionsensitive interventions to accelerate progress. UNICEF, New York.

Briend, A., & Berkley, J. A. (2016). Long term health status of children recovering from severe acute malnutrition. The Lancet Global Health, 4 (9), e590-e591.

Le, K., & Nguyen, M. (2020). Aerial bombardment and educational attainment. International Review of Applied Economics, 34(3), 361-383.

Case, A., Fertig, A., & Paxson, C. (2005). The lasting impact of childhood health and circumstance. Journal of Health Economics, 24 (2), 365-389.

Englund-Ogge, L., Brantster, A. L., Juodakis, J., Haugen, M., Meltzer, H. M., Jacobsson, B., & Sengpiel, V. (2019). Associations between maternal dietary patterns and infant birth weight, small and large for gestational age in the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 73 (9), 1270-1282.

Sekhri, S., & Storeygard, A. (2014). Dowry deaths: Response to weather variability in India. Journal of Development Economics, 111, 212-223.

Rao, S., Kanade, A., Margetts, B. M., Yajnik, C. S., Lubree, H., Rege, S., ... & Fall, C. H. (2003). Maternal activity in relation to birth size in rural India. The Pune Maternal Nutrition Study. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 57 (4), 531-542.

Le, K., & Nguyen, M. (2021). How Education Empowers Women in Developing Countries. The BE Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 21(2), 511-536.

Burgert, C. R., Josh C., Thea R., and Blake Z. (2013). Geographic displacement procedure and georeferenced data release policy for the Demographic and Health Surveys. DHS Spatial Analysis Reports No. 7. Calverton, Maryland, USA: ICF International.

Oskorouchi, H. R. (2019). Learning to Fight: Afghan Child Health and Inutero Exposure to Conflict. Population and Development Review, 45(2), 275-300.

Randell, H., Gray, C., & Grace, K. (2020). Stunted from the start: Early life weather conditions and child undernutrition in Ethiopia. Social Science & Medicine, 261, 113234.

Dimitrova, A., & Bora, J. K. (2020). Monsoon weather and early childhood health in India. PloS one, 15 (4), e0231479.

Le, K., & Nguyen, M. (2020). The impacts of farmland expropriation on Vietnam’s rural households. Review of Development Economics, 24(4), 1560-1582.

Ramakrishnan, U. (2004). Nutrition and low birth weight: from research to practice. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 79(1), 17-21.

World Health Organization. (2008). Training course on child growth assessment. Geneva, WHO.

Hidalgo, F. D., Naidu, S., Nichter, S., & Richardson, N. (2010). Economic determinants of land invasions. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 92 (3), 505-523.

Nguyen, M. (2021). Mask mandates and COVID-19 related symptoms in the US. ClinicoEconomics and Outcomes Research: CEOR, 13, 757.

Currie, J., & Vogl, T. (2013). Early-life health and adult circumstance in developing countries. Annu. Rev. Econ., 5 (1), 1-36.

Glewwe, P., Miguel, & E.A., 2008. The impact of child health and nutrition on education in less developed countries. In: Schultz, T.P., Strauss, J.A. (Eds.), Handbook of Development Economics. North Holland Press, Amsterdam, pp. 35613606.

Le, K., & Nguyen, M. (2021). The impacts of rainfall shocks on birth weight in Vietnam. Journal of Development Effectiveness, 1-17.

Doyle, O., Harmon, C. P., Heckman, J. J., & Tremblay, R. E. (2009). Investing in early human development: timing and economic efficiency. Economics & Human Biology, 7 (1), 1-6.

Guerrant, R. L., Ori, R. B., Moore, S. R., Ori, M. O., & Lima, A. A. (2008). Malnutrition as an enteric infectious disease with long-term effects on child development. Nutrition Reviews, 66 (9), 487-505.

Kien, L. (2020). Internet Access for Children’s Online Schooling during the COVID-19 Pandemic and Parental Mental Health.

Jones, K., Smith, D., Ulleland, C., & Streissguth, A. (1973). Pattern of malformation in offspring of chronic alcoholic mothers. The Lancet, 301 (7815), 1267-1271.

Harris, I., Osborn, T. J., Jones, P., & Lister, D. (2020). Version 4 of the CRU TS monthly high-resolution gridded multivariate climate dataset. Scientific Data, 7 (1), 1-18.

Le, K., & Nguyen, M. (2019). ‘Bad Apple’peer effects in elementary classrooms: the case of corporal punishment in the home. Education Economics, 27(6), 557-572.

Jacoby, H. G., Rabassa, M. J., & Skoufias, E. (2014). Weather and child health in rural Nigeria. Journal of African Economies, 23 (4), 464492.

Kermack, W. O., McKendrick, A. G., & McKinlay, P. L. (1934). Death-Rates in Great Britain and Sweden. Some General Regularities and their Significance. Lancet, 698-703.

Miller, R. (2017). Childhood health and prenatal exposure to seasonal food scarcity in Ethiopia. World Development, 99, 350-376.

Miguel, E., Satyanath, S., & Sergenti, E. (2004). Economic shocks and civil conflict: An instrumental variables approach. Journal of Political Economy, 112(4), 725-753.