Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-767nl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T16:17:03.805Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The impact of drought on human capital in rural India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2019

Kuhu Joshi
Kuhu Joshi*
Affiliation:
International Food Policy Research Institute, New Delhi, India
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: kuhu.joshi@cgiar.org
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We study the impact of a severe drought on children's educational outcomes in rural Maharashtra, a state in central India. Using pooled cross section data on children's test scores, we employ a difference-in-differences methodology to estimate the impact. We find that the drought caused a decline of 4.14 per cent in math scores and 2.67 per cent in reading scores of affected children. We also study heterogeneity in the impact by gender, age, parents' schooling, and household wealth, finding evidence in support of an income effect whereby households with limited means to smooth consumption disinvest in their children in response to the drought.

Keywords

climate changedroughteducationhuman capital
Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , August 2019 , pp. 413 - 436
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abadie, A, Athey, S, Imbens, GW and Wooldridge, J (2017) When should you adjust standard errors for clustering? Technical report, National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
Alderman, H, Hoddinott, J and Kinsey, B (2006) Long-term consequences of early childhood malnutrition. Oxford Economic Papers 58, 450–474.Google Scholar
Baez, JE and Santos, IV (2007) Children's Vulnerability to Weather Shocks: A Natural Disaster as a Natural Experiment. New York: Social Science Research Network.Google Scholar
Baez, J, De la Fuente, A and Santos, I (2010) Do natural disasters affect human capital? An assessment based on existing empirical evidence. World Bank and Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn (IZA), Discussion Paper No. 5164.Google Scholar
Beegle, K, Dehejia, RH and Gatti, R (2006) Child labor and agricultural shocks. Journal of Development Economics 81, 80–96.Google Scholar
Björkman-Nyqvist, M (2013) Income shocks and gender gaps in education: evidence from Uganda. Journal of Development Economics 105, 237–253.Google Scholar
Bonjean, CA, Brunelin, S and Simonet, C (2012) Impact of climate related shocks on child's health in Burkina Faso. Working Papers halshs-00725253, HAL. Available at https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00725253/document.Google Scholar
Cameron, AC, Gelbach, JB and Miller, DL (2008) Bootstrap-based improvements for inference with clustered errors. Review of Economics and Statistics 90, 414–427.Google Scholar
Cunha, F and Heckman, J (2007) The technology of skill formation. American Economic Review 97, 31–47.Google Scholar
Deuchert, E and Felfe, C (2015) The tempest: short-and long-term consequences of a natural disaster for children's development. European Economic Review 80, 280–294.Google Scholar
Duryea, S and Arends-Kuenning, M (2003) School attendance, child labor and local labor market fluctuations in urban Brazil. World Development 31, 1165–1178.Google Scholar
Ferreira, FH and Schady, N (2009) Aggregate economic shocks, child schooling, and child health. The World Bank Research Observer 24, 147–181.Google Scholar
Fitzsimons, E (2007) The effects of risk on education in Indonesia. Economic Development and Cultural Change 56, 1–25.Google Scholar
Government of India (2016) Manual for Drought Management. Technical report. Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, Government of India.Google Scholar
Government of Maharashtra (2012) The Economic Survey of Maharashtra. Technical report. Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Department of Planning, Government of Maharashtra, India.Google Scholar
Groppo, V and Kraehnert, K (2017) The impact of extreme weather events on education. Journal of Population Economics 30, 433–472.Google Scholar
Hanna, R and Oliva, P (2016) Implications of climate change for children in developing countries. The Future of Children 26, 115–132.Google Scholar
Jacob, B and Rothstein, J (2016) The measurement of student ability in modern assessment systems. Journal of Economic Perspectives 30, 85–108.Google Scholar
Jacoby, HG and Skoufias, E (1997) Risk, financial markets, and human capital in a developing country. The Review of Economic Studies 64, 311–335.Google Scholar
Jensen, R (2000) Agricultural volatility and investments in children. American Economic Review 90, 399–404.Google Scholar
Kruger, DI (2007) Coffee production effects on child labor and schooling in rural Brazil. Journal of Development Economics 82, 448–463.Google Scholar
Lohmann, S and Lechtenfeld, T (2015) The effect of drought on health outcomes and health expenditures in rural Vietnam. World Development 72, 432–448.Google Scholar
Maccini, S and Yang, D (2009) Under the weather: health, schooling, and economic consequences of early-life rainfall. American Economic Review 99, 1006–1026.Google Scholar
McKee, TB, Doesken, NJ and Kleist, J (1993) The Relationship of Drought Frequency and Duration to Time Scales. Proceedings of the Eight Conference on Applied Climatology, vol. 17, pp. 179–183, Boston, MA: American Meteorological Society.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, R, Nordhaus, WD and Shaw, D (1994) The impact of global warming on agriculture: a Ricardian analysis. American Economic Review 84, 753–771.Google Scholar
Mishra, S (2006) Farmers' suicides in Maharashtra. Economic and Political Weekly 41, 1538–1545.Google Scholar
Pathania, V (2007) The Long-Run Impact of Drought at Birth on Height of Women in Rural India. Working Paper, Berkeley: University of California.Google Scholar
Paxson, CH (1993) Consumption and income seasonality in Thailand. Journal of Political Economy 101, 39–72.Google Scholar
Psacharopoulos, G (1997) Child labor versus educational attainment some evidence from Latin America. Journal of Population Economics 10, 377–386.Google Scholar
Ravallion, M and Wodon, Q (2000) Does child labour displace schooling? Evidence on behavioural responses to an enrollment subsidy. The Economic Journal 110, 158–175.Google Scholar
Rose, E (1999) Consumption smoothing and excess female mortality in rural India. Review of Economics and Statistics 81, 41–49.Google Scholar
Rosenzweig, MR and Binswanger, HP (1993) Wealth, weather risk and the composition and profitability of agricultural investments. The Economic Journal 103, 56–78.Google Scholar
Shah, M and Steinberg, BM (2017) Drought of opportunities: contemporaneous and long-term impacts of rainfall shocks on human capital. Journal of Political Economy 125, 527–561.Google Scholar
Skoufias, E (2001) Progress and Its Impacts on the Human Capital and Welfare of Households in Rural Mexico: A Synthesis of the Results of an Evaluation by IFPRI. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.Google Scholar
Skoufias, E and Vinha, K (2012) Climate variability and child height in rural Mexico. Economics and Human Biology 10, 54–73.Google Scholar
The Economic Times (2013) Maharashtra reels under worst drought in 40 years. Available at https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/slideshows/nation-world/maharashtra-reels-under-worst-drought-in-40-years/slideshow/18969670.cms.Google Scholar
Townsend, RM (1994) Risk and insurance in village india. Econometrica 62, 539–591.Google Scholar
Udmale, P, Ichikawa, Y, Kiem, AS and Panda, S (2014 a) Drought impacts and adaptation strategies for agriculture and rural livelihood in the Maharashtra State of India. The Open Agriculture Journal 8, 41–47.Google Scholar
Udmale, P, Ichikawa, Y, Manandhar, S, Ishidaira, H and Kiem, AS (2014 b) Farmers' perception of drought impacts, local adaptation and administrative mitigation measures in Maharashtra State, India. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 10, 250–269.Google Scholar
Udmale, P, Ichikawa, Y, Nakamura, T, Shaowei, N, Ishidaira, H and Kazama, F (2016) Rural drinking water issues in India's drought- prone area: a case of Maharashtra State. Environmental Research Letters 11, 1–11.Google Scholar
Udry, C (2006) Child labor. In Banerjee, AV, Benabou, R and Mookherjee, D (eds), Understanding Poverty. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 243–258.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Joshi supplementary material

Joshi supplementary material 1

Download Joshi supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 401.5 KB