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

Medium-Term Health Impacts of Shocks Experienced In Utero and After Birth: Evidence from Detailed Geographic Information on War Exposure

“…Contrary to other recent papers that report no later-life effects of shocks experienced in utero (Endara et al, 2009;Maccini and Yang, 2009;Fletcher, 2014), a notable result in our paper is that Ethiopian and Eritrean children exposed to the war in utero do have significantly lower heights.…”

“…1 Research exploring the impact of shocks has focused on different adverse events including malnutrition (Case et al, 2005;Maluccio et al, 2009;Maccini and Yang, 2009;Almond and Mazumder, 2011), famine (Dercon and Porter, 2010), conflict (Bundervoet et al, 2009;Akresh et al, 2011;Mansour and Rees, 2012;Akbulut-Yuksel, 2014;Valente, forthcoming), diseases and epidemics (Almond, 2006;Bleakley, 2007;Bhalotra and Venkataramani, 2012), natural disasters and extreme weather events (Currie and Rossin-Slater, 2013;Aguero, 2014;Caruso, 2014aCaruso, , 2014bRosales-Rueda, 2014), and pollution (Currie et al, 2009;Nilsson, 2009). 2 The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook (2014) lists over 187 regions in the world that have disputes over international land or sea boundaries or have resource or resident disagreements; 50 of these are in Africa.…”

Rain, temperature, and child–adolescent height among Native Amazonians in Bolivia

“…If so, then failure to include both climate variables at the same time will bias the estimate of the climate variable included in the regression. For instance, some studies suggest that height is associated with more rain (Maccini and Yang 2006;Godoy et al 2007a) and with more temperature (Leonard et al 2002 and that higher temperature is associated with less rain (Wilkie et al 1999). If so, then estimates of rain on height that exclude temperature will contain a downward bias from the negative indirect effect from rain via temperature to height.…”

“…Impetus to examine the association between climate variables and the height of children and adolescents comes from earlier studies in rural Indonesia (Maccini and Yang 2006) and Bolivia (Godoy et al 2007a) suggesting that rain patterns experienced early were only associated with the height of adult women. By focusing on the height of people before they reach adulthood we might explain why this is so.…”

“…Extremes of weather aside, the level of rain and temperature experienced early in life should bear a positive association with the height of children and adolescents (Hypothesis 1). More rain will correlate with more food production in an agricultural economy, making more dietary energy available for growth (Alderman et al 2006;Maccini and Yang 2006;Godoy et al 2007a). Temperature should also correlate positively with height, but for a different reason.…”