Mitigating the health impact of a famine: Evidence from the 1985 Ethiopian emergency food aid

Salvatore Di Falco and Kyungbo Han

Journal of Development Economics, 2025, vol. 176, issue C

Abstract: We examine the long-term mitigating impact of emergency food aid on health status using the food aid response to the Ethiopian famine in 1984 as a case study. Employing novel geospatial data on the location of relief camps where emergency food was distributed, we estimate the effect of proximity to a camp on height in adulthood. We compare different birth timings (born before or during versus after the relief operation) and different villages of birth (born close to versus far from a camp), exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in accessibility to emergency aid. Access to relief operation in early childhood leads to higher stature in adulthood. Aid beneficiaries also display higher later-life labor productivity in the agricultural sector, which suggests that the long-term health consequence of emergency aid may have translated into gains in agricultural productivity.

Keywords: Emergency aid; Relief operation; Health; Children; Humanitarian crisis; Famine (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F35 H84 O13 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:176:y:2025:i:c:s0304387825000823

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103531

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