In the
summer of 1998, Bangladesh was inundated by significant
flooding that covered two-thirds of the country and affected
more than 30 million people. Although annual flooding is
normal and expected in Bangladesh, the 1998 floods caused
extraordinary devastation and were considered a “century”
flood. Homestead flooding, crop loss, and infrastructure
damage compromised household food security and increased
disease prevalence in a population with already high rates
of poverty and malnutrition.
Unfortunately, this type of scenario has become increasingly
common around the world: a significant crisis—whether
environmental, economic, or political—devastates a large
population of densely-settled households who are already
trapped in chronic poverty. How do households anticipate and
respond to such crises in the context of ongoing livelihood
struggles? Do shocks affect investments in human capital?
More specifically, what happens to children in the wake of
such shocks? In this paper I use longitudinal data from the
post-flood period in rural Bangladesh to examine how
children’s human capital, as measured by nutritional status,
responds to severe flooding and its aftermath. I emphasize
the importance of analyzing these responses in a dynamic
context, linking exposure to shocks and nutritional outcomes
to longer-term measures of household vulnerability and
resilience.
I pose two
related research questions. First, did flood exposure in
1998 cause marginal growth faltering in children? To isolate
the effects of the flood and address the endogeneity of
flood exposure, I use a difference-in-difference estimator
and village fixed effects. I also exploit the fact that
younger children are more vulnerable than older children to
nutrition shocks. I next ask whether the effects of flooding
on child growth faltering were mediated by household
resources, hypothesizing that households with lower levels
of pre-flood resources are less able to protect children
from nutrition shocks.
These
analysis help to answer several important policy questions
related to crisis and recovery in vulnerable populations.
The results reveal the extent to which children were
nutritionally compromised by the flood, and which children
fared worst. The analyses also contribute specifically to
the design and implementation of livelihood interventions,
and relief and recovery efforts. Can households use
physical, financial and human capital to protect children’s
nutritional status from significant shocks to income and
food security? If so, is it more effective to focus on
long-term asset-building strategies in vulnerable
populations, or to facilitate asset recovery post-shock
through access to credit and other forms of relief? Given
the increasing exposure to shocks and the quantity of
resources allocated post-disaster to relief and recovery,
these questions are not trivial.
