Prenatal Exposure to Shocks and Early-Life Health: Impact of Terrorism and Flood on Birth Outcomes in Pakistan

Muhammad Nasir ()

No 2018:155, PIDE-Working Papers from Pakistan Institute of Development Economics

Abstract: Simultaneous exposure to natural calamities and conflict shocks is a phenomenon that has been largely understudied. The interplay between natural disasters and conflict shocks can have adverse effects extending beyond the current family members to children in utero. The current paper tries to fill this gap by investigating the impact of floods on pregnancy and birth outcomes across conflict-affected and unaffected districts in Pakistan. Using mother fixed effects strategy in a triple difference framework, the results suggest that in-utero exposure to flood in conflict-affected areas increases the probability of small birth size by 8.1 percentage points. Moreover, exposure to violence in nonflooded districts reduces the likelihood of small birth size by 5.6 percentage points but increase the probability of miscarriage by 3.7 percentage points, thereby suggesting selection into birth. Significant heterogeneities are found across place of residence, income groups, and education levels.

Keywords: Natural Calamity; Violence; Birth Outcomes; Child Health; Pakistan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.pide.org.pk/pdf/Working%20Paper/WorkingPaper-155.pdf First Version, 2018 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Prenatal Exposure to Shocks and Early-Life Health: Impact of Terrorism and Flood on Birth Outcomes in Pakistan (2018)
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:pid:wpaper:2018:155

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in PIDE-Working Papers from Pakistan Institute of Development Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Khurram Iqbal ().