DROUGHTS, CHILD HEALTH AND CHILD LABOR OUTCOMES: EVIDENCE FROM RURAL UGANDA

Abstract

Drought is a major challenge to socioeconomic development in agriculturedependent sub-Saharan Africa, yet its effects on the health outcomes and labor supply decisions of rural households are poorly understood. This paper analyzes newly available panel data on rural Uganda for the years 2009-12 to investigate whether drought is associated with the health and labor outcomes of children aged 0-14 years and 5-14 years respectively. For male and female infants, experiencing a drought is respectively associated with 5.6 and 5.97 percentage point increases in the probability of having a fever. For boys, droughts are also associated with 3-6 fewer hours of weekly labor supply to non-market activities such as working on domestic chores or the household farm. Contrary to findings in previous literature, this study does not find droughts to be associated with increased malnutrition, diarrhea, or formal child labor supply. As this paper provides evidence suggesting that droughts are not exogenous and transitory shocks, it is possible that the more muted results in this paper compared to those found in past work reflect the result of adaptive decision-making by households.