Climate variability and child height in rural Mexico

Skoufias, Emmanuel; Vinha, Katja

doi:10.1016/j.ehb.2011.06.001

Cited by 97 publications

(89 citation statements)

References 41 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Both high altitude and relief were significant for stunting as well as for wasting and underweight in Papua New Guinea (46,49). However, Skoufias et al (43) report region and altitude as significant only for stunting in Mexico.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Although female children were worse off in studies reported from Rwanda (42), Bangladesh (47), and Malawi (40), male children were at a higher risk in Kenya (26,51) and El Salvador (38). In Mexico, Skoufias et al (43) report that the male children tended to be shorter but only when exposed to a warmer prior wet season and who lived at a higher altitude.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Grace et al (26) confirm this result in Kenya (SD = 0.0007, P < 0.1) but additionally report that the variations in rainfall and temperature, as well as temperature alone, had statistically insignificant impacts on stunting. Skoufias et al (43) observed that negative rainfall shocks generally were associated with taller children if the shock occurred in the previous year's wet season (0.7 points higher, for the central region of the country) or in the dry season 2 y prior (0.54 points taller, for the Pacific, Gulf, and Caribbean region), thus indicating regional differences. Huss-Ashmore et al (44) also found a positive correlation between the average rainfall and stunting (R 2 = 0.155) but noted that the effect operates through a set of demographic and economic variables.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Systematic review of current efforts to quantify the impacts of climate change on undernutrition

Phalkey

Aranda-Jan

Marx

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

194

159

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Malnutrition is a challenge to the health and productivity of populations and is viewed as one of the five largest adverse health impacts of climate change. Nonetheless, systematic evidence quantifying these impacts is currently limited. Our aim was to assess the scientific evidence base for the impact of climate change on childhood undernutrition (particularly stunting) in subsistence farmers in low-and middle-income countries. A systematic review was conducted to identify peer-reviewed and gray full-text documents in English with no limits for year of publication or study design. Fifteen manuscripts were reviewed. Few studies use primary data to investigate the proportion of stunting that can be attributed to climate/ weather variability. Although scattered and limited, current evidence suggests a significant but variable link between weather variables, e.g., rainfall, extreme weather events (floods/droughts), seasonality, and temperature, and childhood stunting at the household level (12 of 15 studies, 80%). In addition, we note that agricultural, socioeconomic, and demographic factors at the household and individual levels also play substantial roles in mediating the nutritional impacts. Comparable interdisciplinary studies based on primary data at a household level are urgently required to guide effective adaptation, particularly for rural subsistence farmers. Systemization of data collection at the global level is indispensable and urgent. We need to assimilate data from long-term, high-quality agricultural, environmental, socioeconomic, health, and demographic surveillance systems and develop robust statistical methods to establish and validate causal links, quantify impacts, and make reliable predictions that can guide evidence-based health interventions in the future.climate change | weather variability | malnutrition | childhood undernutrition | crop yield

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Systematic review of current efforts to quantify the impacts of climate change on undernutrition

Phalkey

Aranda-Jan

Marx

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

194

159

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This paper expands on the previous literature by using quarterly variation in NDVI to identify sex-specific differences in the timing of vulnerability before and after birth, and to test for the possible protective effects of improved sanitation and food markets. Our focus on sex differences follows that of Skoufias and Vinha (2012), and our attention to the exact timing of exposure follows Andalon et al (2014) and Carlson (2015), among others, building on previous work in South Asia using Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in both India and Nepal that suggest a stronger link between rainfall variation and child height during early months in infancy than during other periods of a child's life (Lokshin and Radyakin, 2012;Tiwari et al, 2013). Moreover, focusing on the growing seasons in Nepal, other researchers find that anomalies in vegetation density show higher correlations with stunting during the in utero and infancy phases than in other phases of a child's development (Shively et al, 2015).…”

Section: Vulnerability In Utero and After Birthmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This paper uses satellite data on vegetation near each child's home as an indicator of changing agroclimatic conditions, with randomness in the month of birth providing a natural experiment in the timing of exposure to more or less advantageous circumstances. Our use of variation in birth timing relative to changes in climatic conditions contribute to a rapidly growing body of literature using natural experiments to study the determinants of human health (Angrist and Krueger, 2001;Akresh et al, 2011;Lokshin and Radyakin, 2012;Tiwari et al, 2013;Brown et al, 2014), addressing the timing and mechanisms by which early conditions influence later outcomes (Skoufias and Vinha, 2012;Kumar et al, 2016 ;Schultz-Nielsen et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climatic Conditions and Child Height: Sex-Specific Vulnerability and the Protective Effects of Sanitation and Food Markets in Nepal

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

JEL Codes: I150 O130 Q180A B S T R A C T Environmental conditions in early life are known to have impacts on later health outcomes, but causal mechanisms and potential remedies have been difficult to discern. This paper uses the Nepal Demographic and Health Surveys of 2006 and 2011, combined with earlier NASA satellite observations of variation in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) at each child's location and time of birth to identify the trimesters of gestation and periods of infancy when climate variation is linked to attained height later in life. We find significant differences by sex: males are most affected by conditions in their second trimester of gestation, and females in the first three months after birth. Each 100-point difference in NDVI at those times is associated with a difference in height-for-age z-score (HAZ) measured at age 12-59 months of 0.088 for boys and 0.054 for girls, an effect size similar to that of moving within the distribution of household wealth by close to one quintile for boys and one decile for girls. The entire seasonal change in NDVI from peak to trough is approximately 200-300 points during the 2000-2011 study period, implying a seasonal effect on HAZ similar to one to three quintiles of household wealth. This effect is observed only in households without toilets; in households with toilets, there is no seasonal fluctuation, implying protection against climatic conditions that facilitate disease transmission. We also use data from the Nepal Living Standards Surveys on district-level agricultural production and marketing, and find a climate effect on child growth only in districts where households' food consumption derives primarily from their own production. Robustness tests find no evidence of selection effects, and placebo regression results reveal no significant artefactual correlations. The timing and sex-specificity of climatic effects are consistent with previous studies, while the protective effects of household sanitation and food markets are novel indications of mechanisms by which households can gain resilience against adverse climatic conditions.

show abstract

The effects of climate change adaptation strategies on the welfare of rural farm households in Ethiopia

Mogess

Ayen

2023

Food and Energy Security

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We estimate the effect of multiple climate change adaptation strategies (CCAS) on farm household welfare using a new three‐wave panel data derived from the World Bank's geo‐referenced household socioeconomic survey and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) historical weather data. Using the multinomial panel endogenous switching regression model, we discovered that combining climate change adaptation strategies such as crop rotation and improved seed varieties is the most effective way to improve the welfare of smallholder farmers. The average treatment effect (ATT) results show that all CCAS have a positive and significant effect on the pattern of welfare improvement among smallholder farmers, but combinations of CCAS provide the highest payoffs. As a result, the combination of crop rotation and improved seed is the most appealing CCAS package that farmers could adopt as an ex‐ante strategy to improve farm household welfare. We also discovered that climate change and technology adoption are the most important factors influencing the welfare of rural farm households. Furthermore, we discover that the effectiveness of climate change adaptation strategies varies by farm households. Thus, we argued that targeted extension and advisory services, as well as other policies that support the synchronization of adaptation strategies, are critical for improving the welfare of rural farm households.

show abstract

Climate variability and child height in rural Mexico

Cited by 97 publications

References 41 publications

Systematic review of current efforts to quantify the impacts of climate change on undernutrition

Systematic review of current efforts to quantify the impacts of climate change on undernutrition

Climatic Conditions and Child Height: Sex-Specific Vulnerability and the Protective Effects of Sanitation and Food Markets in Nepal

The effects of climate change adaptation strategies on the welfare of rural farm households in Ethiopia

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About