Tropical Cyclones and Fertility : New Evidence from Madagascar
Résumé
Does exposure to tropical cyclones affect fertility? This paper tackles this issue by
exploiting geolocated microdata from the Malagasy Demographic and Health Survey
together with wind field data generated by tropical cyclones hitting Madagascar during
the 1985-2009 period. The mothers’ fertility history available in the microdata allows
us to construct a panel dataset indicating if a mother gave birth during a given year
and if she has been exposed to a tropical cyclone. By means of panel regressions, that
allows a full control of unobserved heterogeneities, we then estimate the causal effect of
tropical cyclone shocks on female likelihood of giving birth. We find evidence that the
effect of tropical cyclone exposure on motherhood is significantly negative. In particular,
being exposed to wind speed of 100 km/h implies a fall in the probability of giving birth
of 25.6 points in the current year together with further decline of 5.9 and 2.0 points
respectively one and two years after being exposed. Alternative specifications of our
baseline model provide further insights. First, we find mixed evidence of intensification
effects. Second, we find no evidence of non-linearities in the effect. Third, the negative
effect is stronger before 1998. Fourth, the effect of tropical cyclone on motherhood is
persistent since in an extended model estimated coefficients are significantly negative
up to seven years after being exposed. The estimated effect is shown to be robust to
the use of alternative formulation of the wind speed variable but also to an alternative
treatment of geolocated data.
Domaines
Economies et financesOrigine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
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