Extreme Events, Educational Aspirations and Long-term Outcomes

Rene A. Iwo, Elizabeth Frankenberg, Cecep Sumantri and Duncan Thomas

No 32702, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was an extremely destructive event in Aceh, Indonesia, killing over 160,000 people and destroying infrastructure, homes, and livelihoods over miles of coastline. In its immediate aftermath, affected populations faced a daunting array of challenges. At the population level, questions of how the disaster affected children’s and parents’ aspirations for education and whether it permanently disrupted schooling progression are critical in understanding how shocks affect human capital in the short and long term. We use longitudinal data from the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR) to examine how disaster exposure affects educational aspirations and eventual attainment. We find that damage to one’s community depresses aspirations in the short term but that this weakens with time. With respect to educational attainment 15 years after the event, children’s aspirations, parents’ education, and family socioeconomic status are more important determinants of whether children complete high school and go on to tertiary schooling than disaster exposure. While these results likely reflect, at least in part, the successful post-tsunami reconstruction program, they also establish enormous resilience among survivors who bore the brunt of the tsunami.

JEL-codes: I20 O12 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-sea and nep-ure
Note: DEV
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published as René Iwo & Elizabeth Frankenberg & Cecep Sumantri & Duncan Thomas, 2024. "Extreme events, educational aspirations, and long-term outcomes," Population and Environment, vol 46(3).

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32702.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
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:nbr:nberwo:32702

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32702
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).