Disasters, disruptions, and foundational learning skills for high- and low-SES children in LMICs

• In Event: Counting down to 2030: Analyzing the achievements and challenges of the global education goal (SDG 4)

Proposal

The accelerating experience of climate change has severe implications for the education, health and welfare of children. Studies of natural disasters’ effects on children have focused on tracing the impacts of specific large-scale disasters (Cho and Kim 2023; Hadiman and Djamaluddin 2022; Tian, Gong, and Zhai 2022; Ciraudo 2020; Gibbs et al. 2019; De Vreyer, Guilbert, and Mesple-Somps 2015; Cas et al. 2014). Most of these studies focus on the effects of natural disasters on child development through their health status, such as the studies on fetal-origins hypothesis in the short and long run using data on the 1918 Influenza Pandemic (Almond and Mazumder 2005; Lin and Liu 2014) or major droughts (Ciancio et al. 2023).
However, to date, there has not been a global study of the distribution of impacts of climate and pollution hazards on child education in low and middle income countries, or whether these ill effects of exposures vary depending on individual, family and community characteristics beyond the overall country characteristics.
This presentation is based on a study analyzing data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), linked with data on natural disasters to examine the extent of disruption in learning for children in low- and middle-income countries, one of the key outcomes of SDG 4. We begin to address this question with analyses of data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys linked to data on natural disasters. We estimate natural-disaster educational disruptions and impacts on children’s foundational learning skills and test for heterogeneities with respect to socioeconomic status.
First, we analyze survey reports of educational disruption due to natural disasters for children ages 5 to 17 in MICS data to depict the scale of disaster-related educational disruptions and potential disparities across socioeconomic groups. Next, to estimate associations of cumulative disaster exposure with gaps in foundational learning skills, we link data on children in these age groups to time-and geo-coded disaster variables in the places where children reside. Based on a set of assumptions about location history, we create time-varying disaster exposures for each child for the first 1,000 days from conception, the most recent years, and the time in between. Finally, we estimate implications of cumulative and recent natural-disaster exposures for foundational learning skills with among children in high- and low-SES households.

Authors

• Emily Hannum, University of Pennsylvania

• JERE RICHARD BEHRMAN, University of Pennsylvania