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Malnutrition pathway for the impact of in utero drought shock on child growth indicators in rural households

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2021

Olukorede Abiona Open the ORCID record for Olukorede Abiona [Opens in a new window]
Olukorede Abiona*
Affiliation:
UTS Business School, Centre for Health Economic Research and Evaluation, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: abionaolukorede@yahoo.co.uk
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Abstract

This paper evaluates the short-term health effects of in utero drought shock using repeated cross-section household data on Malawi. The main finding reveals that the effects of in utero harvest variability caused by rainfall shocks on child growth indices are driven by the deleterious effects of negative rainfall deviations, namely droughts. Negative rainfall deviation during the agricultural season prior to the gestational period of a child leads to a 21.8 per cent average local level reduction in age-standardized height scores, with the counterpart positive rainfall deviation having no apparent effect. The paper also uses harvest and consumption patterns to establish an important link between early-life malnutrition and growth serving as a precursor for the fetal period programming hypothesis in the literature. The direct impact of embryonic period shocks on growth provides supportive evidence on potential interaction between nutritional and environmental pathways.

Keywords

child growthdroughtin uteronutrition

JEL classification

I12: Health Behavior I15: Health and Economic Development
Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , February 2022 , pp. 20 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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