Rainfall shocks and children’s school attendance: evidence from Uganda

Abstract

The increasing frequency of negative rainfall shocks presents households with the challenging choice of whether to send their children to school or to withdraw them in order for them to provide support in the household. We use high-resolution spatial rainfall data matched with the georeferenced Uganda National Panel Survey data to estimate the effect of negative rainfall shocks on children's school attendance. We find that exposure to negative rainfall shocks significantly reduces children's school attendance by almost 10%. These results have important policy implications for improving children's schooling, particularly in geographical areas that receive particularly erratic rainfalls, in Uganda.

Health gender gap in Uganda: do weather effects and water play a role?

“…For temperature, positive temperature deviation is constructed with (1 = yes) denoting annual average temperature deviation of greater than 0 from the long-term mean temperature. Measures such as negative rainfall deviation or anomalies or shocks for any level of deviation have been used previously by other studies in Uganda context by [ 37 , 38 ]. Furthermore, following [ 38 ] approach, we create additional weather variables for extreme negative rain deviation (a dummy variable of 1 if the negative rainfall deviation values of annual rainfall from the long-term mean annual rainfall fall within the lower range (the 50th percentile and below) while extreme positive temperature deviation is 1 if positive temperature deviation fall within the upper range (50th -100th percentile).…”

“…Measures such as negative rainfall deviation or anomalies or shocks for any level of deviation have been used previously by other studies in Uganda context by [ 37 , 38 ]. Furthermore, following [ 38 ] approach, we create additional weather variables for extreme negative rain deviation (a dummy variable of 1 if the negative rainfall deviation values of annual rainfall from the long-term mean annual rainfall fall within the lower range (the 50th percentile and below) while extreme positive temperature deviation is 1 if positive temperature deviation fall within the upper range (50th -100th percentile). Rainfall deviation data is categorized into deciles only for individuals with negative rainfall deviation values while temperature for individuals with positive temperature deviation values.…”

Protecting habitats in low-intensity tropical farmland using carbon-based payments for ecosystem services

“…Policies that tie the provision of yield increases to the continued protection of farmland habitats as yield potential increases (Phalan et al 2018) is important to safeguard vulnerable farmland bird populations. Additionally, with more people experiencing malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa (Oecd 2018), relative to other regions, and with climate change expected to exacerbate food supply issues (Wheeler and Von Braun 2013) and socioeconomic challenges such as educational attendance (Agamile and Lawson 2021), improving food security for local people is paramount to long-term project success.…”

“…The large number of loss-making and subsistence farmers in our data is reflective of agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa (AGRA 2017), where a high proportion of farmers are not involved in formal markets. Likewise, unreliable rainfall, extreme climatic events, and invasive species decimate crop yields, incurring heavy losses to farmers (Pratt et al 2017) and accentuating negative socioeconomic impacts (Agamile and Lawson 2021). As a result, many farmers may be reliant on off-farm activities (Pouliot et al 2012) and non-timber forest products to supplement their incomes (Appiah et al 2009).…”

How effective are cash transfers in mitigating shocks for vulnerable children? Evidence on the impact of the Lesotho CGP on multiple deprivation

“…Individuals and households that experience social, economic and cultural marginalization are less able to respond to and cope with unexpected adverse events, accessing credit or savings, and rather adopt negative strategies at the cost of future income gains and children welfare (Dercon, 2005;Fisher et al, 2017). Most families will opt for sale of assets and reduction in of meals in frequency or size (Mehar et al, 2016;Paumgarten et al, 2020), but reduction in education expenditures -in favour of children's participation to off-farm labour-, as well as child marriage, and even illegal means of survival, can all be adopted by families in the face of shocks and hardship (Bandara et al, 2015;;Nguyen et al, 2020;Trinh et al, 2020 ;Agamile and Lawson, 2021).…”