Droughts and Malnutrition in Africa

Nora Fingado and Steven Poelhekke

No 10385, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: How costly are droughts to individuals’ nutrition in Africa? Do people adapt to recurring droughts? We measure severe drought events using a detailed satellite-based index of greening observed bi-monthly on a relatively high-resolution 0.083° grid between 1982 and 2015, that captures persistent and severe deficits in soil moisture relative to grid- and time-of-year normal moisture. Across 32 African countries, conditional on individual characteristics, timing relative to growing seasons, irrigation, and local grid-level climate, we show that a severe three-month drought reduces adults’ body mass index by 2.5%. Droughts are worse for underweight and uneducated individuals. In contrast, recurring severe droughts, that happen in locations that have seen droughts before, do not significantly affect adults. The effect is driven by unexpected first-time exposure to droughts. The uneducated are more likely to become unemployed during first-time droughts, whereas both labor reallocation across occupations and migration mitigate the effect of recurring droughts.

Keywords: drought; nutrition; body-mass index; education; labor reallocation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I24 J60 O13 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-agr, nep-dev, nep-env and nep-lab
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10385

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