Risks, ex-ante actions, and public assistance: Impacts of natural disasters on child schooling in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi

Futoshi Yamauchi, Yisehac Yohannes and Agnes Quisumbing

No 880, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: "This paper uses panel data from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi to examine the impacts of natural disasters on schooling investments, with a particular focus on the roles of ex-ante actions and ex-post responses. We find that the importance of ex-ante actions depends on disaster risks and the likelihood of public assistance, potentially creating substitution between the two actions. We find that higher future probabilities of disaster increase the likelihood of agents holding more human capital and/or livestock relative to land; this asset-portfolio effect is significant in disaster-prone areas. Our empirical results support the roles of both ex-ante and ex-post (public assistance) responses in coping with disasters, but we see interesting variations across countries. In Ethiopia, public assistance plays a more important role than ex-ante actions in mitigating the impact of shocks on child schooling. In contrast, Malawi households rely more on private ex-ante actions than on public assistance. The Bangladesh example shows that active roles are played by both ex-ante and ex-post actions. These observations are consistent with our findings on the relationship between ex-ante actions and disaster risks. Our results also show that among ex-ante actions, human capital accumulated in the household prior to disasters helps mitigate the negative effects of a disaster in both the short and long runs." from authors' abstract

Keywords: natural disasters; human capital; poverty alleviation; social protection; gender; child care; labour; time use patterns; Bangladesh; Ethiopia; Malawi; Southern Asia; Eastern Africa; Southern Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev and nep-edu
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/161962

Related works:
Working Paper: Risks, ex-ante actions and public assistance: impacts of natural disasters on child schooling in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Malawi (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprid:880

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (ifpri-library@cgiar.org).