Earthquake Impact on the Nutritional Status of the Rural Children: Case from Nepal
Description
Natural disasters cause harmful effects on nutrition, education, health, and income, with some of these effects being both large and long-lasting (Baez, de la Fuente, and Santos 2010). Nepal is the 11th most earthquake-prone country in the world (Pelling et al. 2004). On April 25, 2015, an earthquake of magnitude 7.6 stroke Nepal. The earthquake took the lives of 8,891 people and 22,302 people had sustained injuries. The nutritional status of children is an important component of sustainable development goals in developing countries. Poor nutritional status significantly affects the human capital formation of the developing world and therefore demands to understand the impact of an earthquake on the nutritional status of children. The objective of this paper is to identify the impact of the 2015 earthquake in Nepal on the nutritional status of the children. We use a difference-in-differences (DID) model, and also analyze the impact of the earthquake across gender, age, economic class, and caste/ethnicity groups. We use the Nepal Demographic and Health Survey data (NDHS) from the years 2011 and 2016. We also use the dataset from the year 2006 to check for the parallel trend assumption. We study the difference in the nutritional status (height-for-age Z-score) of the children below the age of 5 years old between the severely earthquake-affected area and less affected area, considering the period before and after the earthquake. Our study finds that Nepal’s earthquake decreased the Height-for-age Z-score (HAZ) by 0.335. Further, we find female children suffer much larger negative health effects relative to their male counterparts. The negative effect on female children is -1.173 more in comparison to male children. This finding infers the prevalence of gender discrimination. In older children, aged more than 2 years, there was a decrease in HAZ by 0.357. Similarly, children from poor households have 1.477 more decreases in HAZ compared to the rich households’ children. Regarding the effect of the earthquake across different caste/ethnicity groups, indigenous nationalities have a significant negative effect of -0.8867. The contribution of this study is that the identification of the negative effect of the earthquake on the nutritional status of children can help in the post-earthquake rehabilitation program to give priority to children. Most importantly, our study finds that female children have a severe negative effect compared to male children. This gender issue can lead to the intergenerational transmission of negative consequences. We also find that older children have a negative effect whereas we do not find a significant result in younger children. Similarly, the study finds that poor household’s children suffer more from the earthquake. Therefore, from these findings, we can infer that earthquakes can further widen the inequality issue of the developing countries. Hence, the policy implication from this finding is that the support program should be targeted to one who has suffered the most. Additionally, the identification of more impact in indigenous people’s children underlines the existence of the marginalized situation of indigenous people in Nepal which can be relevant to the countries in the south Asian region.
Earthquake Impact on the Nutritional Status of the Rural Children: Case from Nepal
Natural disasters cause harmful effects on nutrition, education, health, and income, with some of these effects being both large and long-lasting (Baez, de la Fuente, and Santos 2010). Nepal is the 11th most earthquake-prone country in the world (Pelling et al. 2004). On April 25, 2015, an earthquake of magnitude 7.6 stroke Nepal. The earthquake took the lives of 8,891 people and 22,302 people had sustained injuries. The nutritional status of children is an important component of sustainable development goals in developing countries. Poor nutritional status significantly affects the human capital formation of the developing world and therefore demands to understand the impact of an earthquake on the nutritional status of children. The objective of this paper is to identify the impact of the 2015 earthquake in Nepal on the nutritional status of the children. We use a difference-in-differences (DID) model, and also analyze the impact of the earthquake across gender, age, economic class, and caste/ethnicity groups. We use the Nepal Demographic and Health Survey data (NDHS) from the years 2011 and 2016. We also use the dataset from the year 2006 to check for the parallel trend assumption. We study the difference in the nutritional status (height-for-age Z-score) of the children below the age of 5 years old between the severely earthquake-affected area and less affected area, considering the period before and after the earthquake. Our study finds that Nepal’s earthquake decreased the Height-for-age Z-score (HAZ) by 0.335. Further, we find female children suffer much larger negative health effects relative to their male counterparts. The negative effect on female children is -1.173 more in comparison to male children. This finding infers the prevalence of gender discrimination. In older children, aged more than 2 years, there was a decrease in HAZ by 0.357. Similarly, children from poor households have 1.477 more decreases in HAZ compared to the rich households’ children. Regarding the effect of the earthquake across different caste/ethnicity groups, indigenous nationalities have a significant negative effect of -0.8867. The contribution of this study is that the identification of the negative effect of the earthquake on the nutritional status of children can help in the post-earthquake rehabilitation program to give priority to children. Most importantly, our study finds that female children have a severe negative effect compared to male children. This gender issue can lead to the intergenerational transmission of negative consequences. We also find that older children have a negative effect whereas we do not find a significant result in younger children. Similarly, the study finds that poor household’s children suffer more from the earthquake. Therefore, from these findings, we can infer that earthquakes can further widen the inequality issue of the developing countries. Hence, the policy implication from this finding is that the support program should be targeted to one who has suffered the most. Additionally, the identification of more impact in indigenous people’s children underlines the existence of the marginalized situation of indigenous people in Nepal which can be relevant to the countries in the south Asian region.