Rainfall Shocks Research Articles

La Niia Y Los Niios: Effects of an Unexpected Winter on Early Life Human Capital and Family Responses

We use rainfall shocks caused by La Nina in Colombia between 2010 and 2011 as a source of variation in the inputs of human capital formation. We have outcomes in 2013 for kids 0 to 5 years old and their household characteristics just before La Nina. We measure exposure using the number of days of heavy rains at different ages according to the day of birth of the kid, the exact location of his household and the closest weather station. Exposure in utero reduces birth-weight (0.19SD), weight gain per month (0.07SD), actual weight (0.15SD) and height (0.12SD). Exposure during the second year of life increases the risk of socioemotional problems (0.19SD) and decreases results in cognitive tests (0.10SD). Consistent with reinforcement, children who receive a shock during a critical period also receive less investment by their families. Households were not able to shield their consumption and they cut their expenditures in health and education (0.06SD). However the majority of households do not acknowledge being directly affected by the winter.

Early-Life Environmental Exposures and Height, Hypertension, and Cardiovascular Risk Factors Among Older Adults in India

Environmental exposures like rainfall and temperature influence infectious disease exposure and nutrition, two key early-life conditions linked to later-life health. However, few tests of whether early-life environmental exposures impact adult health have been performed, particularly in developing countries. This study examines the effects of experiencing rainfall and temperature shocks during gestation and up through the first four years after birth on measured height, hypertension, and other cardiovascular risk factors using data on adults aged 50 and above (N = 1,036) from the 2007–2008 World Health Organization Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) and district-level meteorological data from India. Results from multivariate logistic regressions show that negative rainfall shocks during gestation and positive rainfall shocks during the postbirth period increase the risk of having adult hypertension and CVD risk factors. Exposure to negative rainfall shocks and positive temperature shocks in the postbirth period increases the likelihood of falling within the lowest height decile. Prenatal shocks may influence nutrition in utero, while postnatal shocks may increase exposure to infectious diseases and malnutrition. The results suggest that gestation and the first two years after birth are critical periods when rainfall and temperature shocks take on increased importance for adult health.

Off‐farm labor market decisions and agricultural shocks among rural households in Kenya

AbstractUsing household level data from rural Kenya, this article explores whether and how farm households respond to unfavorable agricultural production environments, including any ex post adjustments in off‐farm labor supply in response to unexpected weather shocks. While controlling for a wide range of educational, demographic, and other locational factors, we examine how long‐term weather conditions and specific rainfall shocks influence a household's decision to engage in, and their earnings from, the off‐farm labor market. We find that rural households engage in off‐farm work as a long‐term strategy to deal with the effects of anticipated weather conditions on their farming operations. The analysis does not reveal major short‐term adjustments in off‐farm engagement as a result of specific, unexpected rainfall shocks; these households do however rely on remittance income and petty agricultural wage labor under these circumstances. Holding other factors constant, and conditional on participation, households in areas with a more productive local agriculture tend to earn more from off‐farm work especially in the informal/business sector than their counterparts in regions with a less productive agriculture. As expected, a vibrant local economy in the form of public investment increases the probability of off‐farm participation.

Rainfall and conflict: A cautionary tale

There is evidence that, in some contexts, income shocks cause conflict. The literature demonstrating this relationship uses rainfall shocks to instrument for income shocks, arguing that in agriculturally-dependent regions, negative rain shocks lower income which incites violence. This identification strategy relies on the assumption that rainfall shocks affect conflict only through their impacts on income. This paper evaluates this exclusion restriction in the context of religious conflict in India. Using data on dam construction, I identify districts that are downstream from irrigation dams and show that income in these areas is much less sensitive to rainfall fluctuations. However, rain shocks remain equally strong predictors of riot incidence in these districts. I explore other channels through which rainfall might affect conflict.

Effects of Temperature and Rainfall Shocks on Economic Growth in Africa

This paper examines the impact of temperature and rainfall volatility on economic growth in 46 African countries. We employ the Bayesian hierarchical modeling approach which allows us to estimate both country level and Africa-wide impact of climate change and extreme events on economic growth in Africa. Our results show that a 1 0 Celsius increase in temperature leads to 1.58 percentage points decline in economic growth while temperature shock reduces economic growth by 3.22 percentage points. A 1 percent change or shock in rainfall leads to a 6.7 percent change in economic growth. The impact of temperature changes across the 46 countries ranges from-1.24 percent to-1.82 percent in GDP. There are proximity effects on the impact. To maximize the benefits of economies of scale, the paper suggests combined national, cross countries and continental approaches to climate change adaptation in Africa.

Regional Migration, Insurance and Economic Shocks: Evidence from Nicaragua

To test whether transfers sent and received by regional migrants serve an insurance role, this paper estimates the causal impact of income shocks at a migrant's origin and destination location on the bilateral transfer of funds. Using rainfall shocks in rural Nicaragua, I find that migrants aged 15-21 years provide unilateral insurance to their origin household. Distinguishing by destination and economic activity I show that the level of insurance increases when migrants and households are exposed to less correlated shocks. In addition, I find evidence of bilateral insurance among rural migrants exposed to rainfall shocks with low levels of correlation with respect to shocks occurring at origin.

Gone with the Storm: Rainfall Shocks and Household Well-Being in Guatemala

This paper investigates the causal consequences of Tropical Storm Agatha (2010) – the strongest tropical storm ever to strike Guatemala since rainfall records have been kept – on household welfare. The analysis reveals substantial negative effects, particularly among urban households. Per capita consumption fell by 12.6%, raising poverty by 5.5 percentage points (an increase of 18%). The negative effects of the shock span other areas of human welfare. Households cut back on food consumption (10% or 43 to 108 fewer calories per person per day) and reduced expenditures on basic durables. These effects are related to a drop in income per capita (10%), mostly among salaried workers. Adults coped with the shock by increasing their labor supply (on the intensive margin) and simultaneously relying on the labor supply of their children and withdrawing them from school. Impact heterogeneity is associated with the intensity of the shock, food price inflation, and the timing of Agatha with respect to the harvest cycle of the main crops. The results are robust to placebo treatments, household migration, issues of measurement error, and different samples. The negative effects of the storm partly explain the increase in poverty seen in urban Guatemala between 2006 and 2011, which national authorities and analysts previously attributed solely to the collateral effects of the global financial crisis.

Drought of Opportunities: Contemporaneous and Long-Term Impacts of Rainfall Shocks on Human Capital

Drought of Opportunities: Contemporaneous and Long-Term Impacts of Rainfall Shocks on Human Capital

Water scarcity and birth outcomes in the Brazilian semiarid

Roughly one-third of the rural population in developing countries lives in arid and semiarid regions, facing recurrent water scarcity. This is likely to become an even more common situation with climate change. This paper analyzes the impact of rainfall fluctuations during the gestational period on health at birth in the Brazilian semiarid, highlighting the role of water scarcity as a determinant of early life health. We find that negative rainfall shocks are robustly correlated with higher infant mortality, lower birth weight, and shorter gestation periods. Mortality effects are concentrated on intestinal infections and malnutrition, and are greatly minimized when the local public health infrastructure is sufficiently developed (municipality coverage of piped water and sanitation). We also find that effects are stronger during the fetal period (2nd trimester of gestation), for children born during the dry season, and for mortality immediately after birth. Our estimates suggest that expansions in public health infrastructure would be a cost-effective way of reducing the response of infant mortality to rainfall scarcity.

Dowry deaths: Response to weather variability in India

We examine the effect of rainfall shocks on dowry deaths using data from 583 Indian districts for 2002–2007. We find that a one standard deviation decline in annual rainfall from the local mean increases reported dowry deaths by 7.8%. Wet shocks have no apparent effect. We examine patterns of other crimes to investigate whether an increase in general unrest during economic downturns explains the results but do not find supportive evidence. Women's political representation in the national parliament has no apparent mitigating effect on dowry deaths.

Rainfall Shocks, Local Revenues, and Intergovernmental Transfer in Mali

Summary This paper explores the implications of rainfall shocks for municipal tax revenues and intergovernmental transfers in Mali. I found that exogenous phenomena such as weather, not under the control of local actors, could affect the way de facto decentralization plays out by influencing the fiscal capacity of local governments. In a panel data of 692 municipalities from 2000 to 2008, I found that rainfall shocks, through the fluctuations they induce in agricultural incomes, affect revenue collection of local governments, and in turn drive further revenues local governments receive through transfer by the central government.

Agricultural Productivity, Hired Labor, Wages, and Poverty: Evidence from Bangladesh

This paper provides evidence on the effects of agricultural productivity on wage rates, labor supply to market oriented activities, and labor allocation between own farming and wage labor in agriculture. To guide the empirical work, this paper develops a general equilibrium model that underscores the role of reallocation of family labor engaged in the production of non-marketed services at home (`home production'). The model predicts positive effects of a favorable agricultural productivity shock on wages and income, but the effect on hired labor is ambiguous; it depends on the strength of reallocation of labor from home to market production by labor surplus and deficit households. Taking rainfall variations as a measure of shock to agricultural productivity, and using subdistrict level panel data from Bangladesh, this paper finds significant positive effects of a favorable rainfall shock on agricultural wages, labor supply to market work, and per capita household expenditure. The share of hired labor in contrast declines substantially in response to a favorable productivity shock, which is consistent with a case where labor-deficit households respond more than the labor-surplus ones in reallocating labor from home production.

Income Shocks and HIV in Africa

We examine how variation in local economic conditions has shaped the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Using data from over 200,000 individuals across 19 countries, we match biomarker data on individuals’ serostatus to information on local rainfall shocks, a large source of income variation for rural households. We estimate infection rates in HIV-endemic rural areas increase by 11% for every recent drought, an effect that is statistically and economically significant. Income shocks explain up to 20% of variation in HIV prevalence across African countries, suggesting existing approaches to HIV prevention could be bolstered by helping households manage income risk better. The relationship between income and health has long been of interest to economists and a lengthy literature documents strong linkages between economic conditions and many important health outcomes (Currie, 2009). There has been much less progress, however, in understanding the economic foundations of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, one of the most important global health challenges. Such an understanding might yield particular dividends in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where over a million people continue to become newly infected with the disease each year (UNAIDS, 2010). In this article, we explore the role of negative income shocks in shaping the

Children of Drought: Rainfall Shocks and Early Child Health in Rural India

Barker’s fetal origins hypothesis suggests a strong relationship between in utero conditions, health and overall child development after birth. Using nationally representative population survey, this paper analyzes the impact of rainfall on early child health in rural India. We find that drought experienced in utero has detrimental effects on nutritional status of children. Effects appear to be stronger for boys, low caste children, and children exposed to drought in the first trimester. Results are robust to alternative definitions of drought. Our estimates speculate that policies aimed at reducing vulnerability to negative rainfall shock may result into improved health and higher human capital accumulation in rain-dependent agrarian countries.

Chaos in economic models with exogenous shocks

We investigate the generation of chaos in economic models through exogenous shocks. The perturbation is formulated as a pulse function where either values or instants of discontinuity are chaotically behaved. We provide a rigorous proof of the existence of chaos in the perturbed model. The analytical results are applied to Kaldor–Kalecki-type models of the aggregate economy subject to export and rainfall shocks, respectively. Simulations are used to demonstrate the emergence and the control of chaos. Our results shed light on a novel source of chaos in economic models and have important implications for policy-making.

Rainfall Shocks and Within-Community Wealth Inequality: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia

Household-level impacts of environmental shocks are often negative, but may vary considerably due to heterogeneous vulnerability. This paper considers how differential vulnerability among households affects inequality within rural communities in Ethiopia. This study makes novel use of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and a NASA agro-climatology dataset. Results show that rainfall deficits have an equalizing effect on within-community livestock inequality in parts of Ethiopia, but regional differences are observed. A non-significant effect is observed with respect to asset inequality. As an initial study on this topic, this paper outlines an agenda for future data collection and analysis efforts.

Weather and Child Health in Rural Nigeria

The effect of weather shocks on children's anthropometrics is investigated using the two most recent rounds of the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (DHS). For this purpose, climate data for each DHS cluster are interpolated using daily weather station records from the national network. The findings reveal that rainfall shocks have a statistically significant and robust impact on child health in the short-run for both weight-for-height and height-for-age, and the incidence of diarrhoea. The impacts of weather shocks on health are of considerable magnitude; however, children seem to catch-up with their cohort rapidly after experiencing a shock. Finally, it appears that the impact of these shocks is the same for young boys and girls, which suggests that there is no gender-based discrimination in the allocation of resources within households.

Child Schooling, Child Health, and Rainfall Shocks: Evidence from Rural Vietnam

We study the effect of rainfall shocks on child schooling outcomes and on standardised height for age (a measure of child health) in rural Vietnam. We find that adverse rainfall shocks during pregnancy adversely affect children’s school entry delay and progress through school. Adverse rainfall shocks in the third year of life adversely affect both schooling and child health. These effects differ by region, as a result of constraints that reflect regional economic heterogeneity. We predict that policies that help rural families smooth income shocks will result in increases in human capital and in substantial cumulative returns over a worker’s working life.

Rural-Urban Migration and the Skill Wage Premium in Brazil: 1980-2000

We use a production function approach to determine the impact of increased labour supply of different skill level on the skill wage premium. In particular, we use data the Brazilian Population Census for 1980 to 2000, for which we have consistent data on cities, to estimate the elasticity of substitution between high and low-skill workers. Unlike the international migration literature, we can estimate the response of out migration from rural areas in response to exogenous shocks, such as rainfall shocks and changes in transportation costs, and use the predicted value from these shocks to construct our instrumental variable. We nd an elasticity of substitution between high and low-skill workers of 0.56, much lower than what has been found in the international migration literature. Our simulations show that migration between 1991 and 2000 had only a small impact of the skill wage gap, a 1.1% decrease in the wage gap between high and low-skill workers in Brazil, explaining only 5% of the changes in relative wages between high and low-skill workers seen in the data during this time period. Though this impact is small is it is 2.5 times larger than what we would have found using the elasticity of substitution between high and low-skill of developed countries.

Poverty and Crime: Evidence from Rainfall and Trade Shocks in India

Does poverty lead to crime? We shed light on this question using two independent and exogenous shocks to household income in rural India: the dramatic reduction in import tariffs in the early 1990s and rainfall variations. We find that trade shocks, previously shown to raise relative poverty, also increased the incidence of violent crimes and property crimes. The relationship between trade shocks and crime is similar to the observed relationship between rainfall shocks and crime. Our results thus identify a causal effect of poverty on crime. They also lend credence to a large literature on the effects of weather shocks on crime and conflict, which has usually assumed that the income channel is the most relevant one.