WIC Colloquium 17.10.2019, 13:00
16 OCT 2019
WIC Colloquium - 17.10.2019, 13:00
Nathan Keyfitz Library, Vienna Institute of Demography
Marina Dodlova from the University of Passau will give a talk on "Natural Disasters, Child Nutrition and Education: Evidence from the 2010 Haiti Earthquake".
This paper aims to study the effects of natural disasters on human capital accumulation. In particular, we examine the impact of the 2010 Haiti earthquake on child nutrition and educational outcomes. Using the geo-coded data from the Demographic Health Survey and USGS ShakeMaps, we find strong negative impacts of the earthquake on child stunting and wasting as well as on school attendance and attainment. The results remain robust for several robustness checks and different methodologies applied for calculating shaking intensity. More importantly, the deterioration of child nutrition and education is significant even after controlling for the aid allocation provided by the World Bank to overcome the earthquake aftermath. Our contribution accentuates the necessity to improve nutrition, achieve food security and promote education after natural disasters in poor countries. More
The Wittgenstein Centre aspires to be a world leader in the advancement of demographic methods and their application to the analysis of human capital and population dynamics. In assessing the effects of these forces on long-term human well-being, we combine scientific excellence in a multidisciplinary context with relevance to a global audience. It is a collaboration among the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the University of Vienna.