The gendered effects of rainfall on early childhood nutrition: Evidence from Papua New Guinea

Jessica Leight, Rishabh Mukerjee and Emily Schmidt

No 2358, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: Rainfall fluctuations can significantly reduce welfare for poor rural households in low- and middle-income countries dependent on rainfed agriculture for consumption, and in some contexts these adverse effects may be borne disproportionately by vulnerable household members, particularly children and girls. We present new evidence around the effects of rainfall fluctuations on child anthropometric status in Papua New Guinea, an understudied context characterized by some of the highest stunting rates in the world. We show that negative fluctuations in rainfall within a 12-month period are associated with reduced household consumption (driven by reduced consumption of own-produced food). Moreover, when these fluctuations are observed in the first year of a child’s life, they lead to a reduction in height forage and weight-for-age (though no shift in stunting), but this effect is observed only for girls: boys seem to be protected from the adverse effects of rainfall fluctuations experienced in infancy.

Keywords: anthropometry; children; households; less favoured areas; rainfall patterns; child stunting; Papua New Guinea; Oceania (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09-16
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/176517

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:fpr:ifprid:176517

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().