Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Natural disasters, self-insurance and human capital investment : evidence from Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Malawi

Contents:

Author Info

  • Yamauchi, Futoshi
  • Yohannes, Yisehac
  • Quisumbing, Agnes

Abstract

This paper examines the impacts of disasters on dynamic human capital production using panel data from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi. The empirical results show that the accumulation of biological human capital prior to disasters helps children maintain investments in the post-disaster period. Biological human capital formed in early childhood (long-term nutritional status) plays a role of insurance with resilience to disasters by protecting schooling investment and outcomes, although disasters have negative impacts on investment. In Bangladesh, children with more biological human capital are less affected by the adverse effects of floods, and the rate of investment increases with the initial human capital stock in the post-disaster recovery process. In Ethiopia and Malawi, where droughts are rather frequent, exposure to highly frequent droughts in some cases reduces schooling investment but the negative impacts are larger among children embodying less biological human capital. Asset holdings prior to the disasters, especially the household's stock of intellectual human capital, also helps maintain schooling investments at least to the same degree as the stock of human capital accumulated in children prior to the disasters.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2009/04/24/000158349_20090424143700/Rendered/PDF/WPS4910.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by The World Bank in its series Policy Research Working Paper Series with number 4910.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 01 Apr 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4910

Contact details of provider:
Postal: 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433
Phone: (202) 477-1234
Email:
Web page: http://www.worldbank.org/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: Natural Disasters; Hazard Risk Management; Access to Finance; Economic Theory&Research; Health Monitoring&Evaluation;

Other versions of this item:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Harold Alderman & John Hoddinott & Bill Kinsey, 2004. "Long Term Consequences Of Early Childhood Malnutrition," HiCN Working Papers 09, Households in Conflict Network.
  2. Cunha, Flavio & Heckman, James J. & Lochner, Lance, 2006. "Interpreting the Evidence on Life Cycle Skill Formation," Handbook of the Economics of Education, Elsevier.
  3. Yamauchi, Futoshi, 2006. "Early childhood nutrition, schooling, and sibling inequality in a dynamic context: evidence from South Africa," FCND briefs 203, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
  4. Noy, Ilan, 2009. "The macroeconomic consequences of disasters," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 221-231, March.
  5. Hoddinott, John & Kinsey, Bill, 2001. " Child Growth in the Time of Drought," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 63(4), pages 409-36, September.
  6. Pitt, Mark M & Rosenzweig, Mark R, 1990. "Estimating the Intrahousehold Incidence of Illness: Child Health and Gender-Inequality in the Allocation of Time," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 31(4), pages 969-80, November.
  7. del Ninno, Carlo & Lundberg, Mattias, 2005. "Treading water: The long-term impact of the 1998 flood on nutrition in Bangladesh," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 67-96, March.
  8. del Ninno, Carlo & Dorosh, Paul A. & Smith, Lisa C. & Roy, Dilip K., 2001. "The 1998 floods in Bangladesh: disaster impacts, household coping strategies, and responses," Research reports 122, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. How to insure against natural disasters in the absence of insurance
    by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2009-05-18 20:15:00
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Tim Lohse & Julio R. Robledo & Ulrich Schmidt, 2012. "Self‐Insurance and Self‐Protection as Public Goods," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 79(1), pages 57-76, 03.
  2. Cameron, Lisa A. & Shah, Manisha, 2012. "Risk-Taking Behavior in the Wake of Natural Disasters," IZA Discussion Papers 6756, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  3. Anh Duc Dang, 2012. "On the Sources of Risk Preferences in Rural Vietnam," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2012-593, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
  4. Mueller, Valerie & Quisumbing, Agnes, 2010. "Short- and long-term effects of the 1998 Bangladesh flood on rural wages," IFPRI discussion papers 956, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
  5. Dang, Duc Anh, 2012. "On the sources of risk preferences in rural Vietnam," MPRA Paper 38058, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  6. Felfe, Christina & Deuchert. Eva, 2011. "The tempest: Using a natural disaster to evaluate the link between wealth and child development," Economics Working Paper Series 1146, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
  7. Dang, Duc Anh, 2012. "On the sources of risk preferences in rural Vietnam," MPRA Paper 38738, University Library of Munich, Germany.

Lists

This item is featured on the following reading lists or Wikipedia pages:
  1. Economic Logic blog

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4910

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Roula I. Yazigi).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.