The Effect of Drought on Health Outcomes and Health Expenditures in Rural Vietnam

The Effects of Income Fluctuations on Rural Health and Nutrition

“…Studies looking both across and within countries reveal strong correlations between income and health (Cutler et al, 2006;Adda et al, 2009;Currie, 2009;Banerjee et al, 2010;Bengtsson, 2010;Baird et al, 2011;Ebenstein et al, 2015). In terms of a causal link, some of the best identified studies of the impacts of income on health consider either extreme events that provide natural experiments-like droughts (Lohmann and Lechtenfeld, 2015;Hyland and Russ, 2019), blights (Banerjee et al, 2010), prolonged blackouts (Burlando, 2014), war and armed conflict (Akresh et al, 2012;Minoiu and Shemyakina, 2014), recessions (Bhalotra, 2010), or financial crises (Cutler et al, 2002;Van den Berg et al, 2006;Bozzoli and Quintana-Domeque, 2014;Hidrobo, 2014)-or randomized controlled trials of cash transfer programs. However, extreme events can have unique behavioral impacts, such as reduced life satisfaction (Luechinger and Raschky, 2009), increased risk aversion (Cameron and Shah, 2015), and reduced aspirations for the future (Kosec and Mo, 2017), which smaller fluctuations in income do not bring about.…”

Climate Variability and Child Nutrition: Findings from Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Morbidities including diarrheal illnesses and vector-borne diseases (e.g., malaria, dengue fever, chikungunya) are all major causes of child malnutrition, and have also been shown to be sensitive to changing environmental conditions (Bandyopadhyay et al 2012;Caminade & Jones 2016;Kolstad & Johansson 2010). Environment-induced changes in morbidity among adult household members may also filter down to affect younger members by leading to shifts in time and resource allocation away from children (Lohmann & Lechtenfeld 2015;Mueller & Gray 2018;Pailler & Tsaneva 2018). An implication is that climatic variability may affect the incidence of malnutrition even in the absence of changes to food availability and access-and even among populations with only tenuous ties to agricultural production.…”

Climate change, rice production, and migration in Vietnamese households

“…Using panel data from rural Vietnam and rainfall data in an instrumental variable approach, Lohmann and Lechtenfeld (2015) find that in the year of droughts populations face an increased risk of illness. Drought-related health shocks also cause financial burden for many households, with health expenditures increasing by 9-17 per cent of total consumption.…”