 El Niño and children: Medium-term effects of early-life weather shocks on cognitive and health outcomesArturo Aguilar Esteva () and Marta Vicarelli World Development, 2022, vol. 150, issue C Abstract: The fact that shocks in early life can have long-term consequences is well established in the literature. This paper examines the effects of extreme precipitations on cognitive and health outcomes and shows that impacts can be detected as early as 2 years of age. Our analyses indicate that negative conditions (i.e., extreme precipitations) experienced during the early stages of life affect children’s physical, cognitive and behavioral development measured between 2 and 6 years of age. Affected children exhibit lower cognitive development (measured through language, working and long-term memory and visual-spatial thinking) in the magnitude of 0.15 to 0.19 SDs. Lower height and weight impacts are also identified. Changes in food consumption and diet composition appear to be key drivers behind these impacts. Partial evidence of mitigation from the delivery of government programs is found, suggesting that if not addressed promptly and with targeted policies, cognitive functioning delays may not be easily recovered. Keywords: Early child development; Human capital; Cognitive skills; Weather shocks; ENSO (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:150:y:2022:i:c:s0305750x21003053 DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105690 Access Statistics for this article World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes More articles in World Development from Elsevier |
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