Climatic Variability and Pathways of Impact on Child Nutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract Anomaly measures based on different water availability indicators at different time reference periods are constructed for the purpose of (i) shedding more light on the effects of climatic variability through the income and the disease environment pathways on child chronic undernutrition, and (ii) investigating how the estimates vary using different anomaly measures applied to the same data set. The premise of the study, also backed by some evidence, is that water availability anomalies during the growing season provide estimates of the impacts of climatic variability on child health later in life through the household income pathway, whereas rainfall and temperature anomalies in the last year reflect the composite impacts through the disease and income pathways. Droughts experienced by children in the most recent growing season since their date of birth are significantly associated with increased chronic undernutrition later in life. Measures such as the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index and the soil water index that account for temperature and soil type suggest that the effects through the income pathway are as important as the effects of anomalies through the disease environment pathway. JEL Codes: I15, J13, Q54, Q25, O12, O15