Weather Shocks and Health at Birth in Colombia
Poor health at birth has negative long-run effects on individual well-being and is also detrimental for intergenerational mobility. This paper examines whether health outcomes at birth are affected by in utero increased exposure to rainfall and tem...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank Group, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/11/20346018/weather-shocks-health-birth-colombia http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20636 |
| Summary: | Poor health at birth has negative
long-run effects on individual well-being and is also
detrimental for intergenerational mobility. This paper
examines whether health outcomes at birth are affected by in
utero increased exposure to rainfall and temperature shocks
in Colombia, one of the countries in the world with the
highest incidence of extreme weather events per year. The
paper uses a fixed effects design to gauge the causal effect
using variation in fetal exposure to these shocks by
municipality and date of birth. The analysis finds negative
effects of temperature shocks on birth health outcomes and
no effect of rainfall shocks. The results indicate that heat
waves lead to a 0.5 percentage point reduction in the
probability of being born at full term and a decline of 0.4
percentage point in the probability of newborns classified
as healthy. The timing of exposure to the shock matters and
it matters differently for different outcomes. These
findings are critical to prioritize responses to counteract
the negative effects of weather, particularly hot shocks,
which are projected to become more frequent and intense with
changing climate. |
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