Under the Weather: Health, Schooling, and Economic Consequences of Early-Life Rainfall

Sharon L. Maccini and Dean Yang

No 14031, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: How sensitive is long-run individual well-being to environmental conditions early in life? This paper examines the effect of weather conditions around the time of birth on the health, education, and socioeconomic outcomes of Indonesian adults born between 1953 and 1974. We link historical rainfall for each individual's birth-year and birth-location with current adult outcomes from the 2000 wave of the Indonesia Family Life Survey. Higher early-life rainfall has large positive effects on the adult outcomes of women, but not of men. Women with 20% higher rainfall (relative to normal local rainfall) in their year and location of birth are 3.8 percentage points less likely to self-report poor or very poor health, attain 0.57 centimeters greater height, complete 0.22 more grades of schooling, and live in households that score 0.12 standard deviations higher on an asset index. These patterns most plausibly reflect a positive impact of rainfall on agricultural output, leading to higher household incomes and food availability and better health for infant girls. We present suggestive evidence that eventual benefits for adult women's socioeconomic status are most strongly mediated by improved schooling attainment, which in turn improves socioeconomic status in adulthood.

JEL-codes: I1 I2 I3 O1 O15 Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-hea, nep-lab and nep-sea
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Published as Sharon Maccini & Dean Yang, 2009. "Under the Weather: Health, Schooling, and Economic Consequences of Early-Life Rainfall," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 1006-26, June.

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