Weather and child health in rural Nigeria

Mariano Rabassa, Emmanuel Skoufias and Hanan Jacoby

No 6214, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: The effect of weather shocks on children's anthropometrics is investigated using the two most recent rounds of the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey. For this purpose, climate data for each survey 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 diarrhea. 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. The paper does not find any evidence of nonlinear impacts of weather variability on children's health, suggesting that a moderate increase in future rainfall variability is not likely to bring additional health costs. 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.

Keywords: Health Monitoring&Evaluation; Science of Climate Change; Environmental Economics&Policies; Disease Control&Prevention; Climate Change Mitigation and Green House Gases (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-10-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-env and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Journal Article: Weather and Child Health in Rural Nigeria (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6214

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