Environment, Development and Sustainability

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-020-01064-7

Persistent effects of natural disasters on human

development: quasi‑experimental evidence for Argentina

Fernando Antonio Ignacio González1 · Maria Emma Santos1,3 · Silvia London1,2

Received: 18 December 2019 / Accepted: 21 October 2020

© Springer Nature B.V. 2020

Abstract
This paper evaluates whether exposure to natural disasters very early in the life of a per-
son has persistent effects on her human development outcomes in the case of Argentina.
Using the microdata of the 2010 National Census of Population and the Disaster Inventory
System’s (DesInventar) records of the occurrence of natural disasters, we estimate a differ-
ences in differences model, exploiting geographical variation (between districts of Argen-
tina) and temporal variation (between birth cohorts) in the occurrence of natural disasters.
Fixed effects are considered by cohorts and districts, as well as control variables. We find
that exposure to natural disasters during the first year of life significantly reduces the num-
ber of years of schooling achieved in 0.03 years and increases the chances of being unem-
ployed when adult. Importantly, we find that the personal experience of a natural disaster
goes beyond individual outcomes, increasing the chances of living in a multidimensionally
poor household when adult. Exposure to natural disasters during gestation also has signifi-
cant detrimental impact on these outcomes. In the context of climate change, in which an
increase in the frequency and severity in the occurrence of natural disasters is expected,
our results are a call of attention, indicating that it is of outmost importance to design and
implement public policies towards increasing the country’s preparedness and resilience to
natural disasters.

Keywords Natural disasters · Multidimensional poverty · Schooling outcomes ·

Unemployment · Quasi-experimental design · Persistence · Argentina · Human
development · Differences in differences

* Fernando Antonio Ignacio González

Fernando_gonzalez01@hotmail.com
Maria Emma Santos
msantos@uns.edu.ar
Silvia London
Silvia.london@gmail.com
1
Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas y Sociales del Sur, Universidad Nacional del Sur
(UNS)-Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), San Andrés 800,
Bahía Blanca, Argentina
2
Departamento de Economía-UNS, Bahía Blanca, Argentina
3
Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), University of Oxford, 3 Mansfield
Road, Oxford, UK

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 F. A. I. González et al.

1 Introduction

Historical records of natural disasters indicate that the frequency, intensity and economic
impact of disasters have increased in recent years (Klomp and Valckx 2014), and this is
expected to deepen in the future as a result of climate change (IPCC 2018). Only during
2018, natural disasters affected 68.5 million people worldwide, with an estimated mortality
of more than 11,000 people, and generated losses of U$S 132 billion (CRED 2019). Also,
the empirical evidence suggests the existence of a significant and negative effect of disas-
ters on economic growth, which is greater in developing countries, whose population is
more vulnerable and has reduced coping strategies (Loayza et al. 2012; Fomby et al. 2013).
In Argentina, 41% of all natural disasters registered between 1970 and 2015 took place
between 2000 and 2015, exhibiting an increasing trend in the number of disasters (DesIn-
ventar 2018), a trend that is shared globally, especially between middle-high income coun-
tries (Munich Re 2019). Natural disasters that took place in Argentina between 1980 and
2010 involved a cost of US$ 13.6 billion in economic losses and directly caused 798 deaths
(Munich Re 2019).
A natural hazard is conceived as a natural phenomenon or process capable of causing
loss of human life, injury or other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods
and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental damage (UN-ISDR 2009).
From the moment that the potential damages or losses derived from the natural hazard
materialize, the natural disaster arises, understood as a serious interruption in the function-
ing of a community, which exceeds the capacity of the affected people to cope with the
situation through the use of its own resources (UN-ISDR 2009). Natural disasters can be of
various types including earthquakes, droughts, floods and tempests, among others.
The first direct impact of natural disasters on human development is obviously detri-
mental, causing—at its worst—deaths, injuries and disabilities, but also the destruction and
damage of housing, basic infrastructure, productive capital and physical assets in general
and disrupting marketing chains (Ginoux and Menendez 2016; Baez et al. 2010). A priori,
these initial detrimental impacts are expected to continue over some time as they affect the
processes of human development.
However, it has been argued that beyond the initial detrimental impact, the net effect
of a natural disaster over different dimensions of human development is, at least theoreti-
cally, ambiguous. For example, the losses in infrastructure—frequently obsolete—can lead
to replacements with newer and more efficient infrastructure, including better schools and
health clinics than the ones available before the disaster (Baez et al. 2010). Disasters can
also lead to the adoption of new and more productive technologies (Ginoux and Menendez
2016). Logically, these beneficial effects could take place provided governments have the
fiscal capacity to finance such reconstruction or otherwise receive foreign aid.
For the case of schooling, Ferreira and Schady (2008) distinguish the income and sub-
stitution effects. By the income effect—they argue—the decline in overall income increases
the marginal utility of children’s contribution to the family budget, and this reduces the
chances of child attendance to school.1 However, Ferreira and Schady point that this can
be compensated and even outweighed by the substitution effect, by which the decline in
wages lowers the opportunity cost of schooling. In terms of health outcomes, the reduction

1
This effect is reinforced if a) there is no replacement of schooling infrastructure, b) there is a decline in
expected returns to schooling, and c) there is a reduction in school quality.

13
Persistent effects of natural disasters on human development:…

in family income reduces the consumption of health-promoting goods (such as nutritious

food, medicines, hygiene products, etc.), and this may be reinforced by a fall in public
health expenditures. Yet this may be compensated if, as a consequence of the shock, par-
ents can spend more time with their children in health-promoting activities and childcare
(Ferreira and Schady 2008; Baez et al. 2010). Even in the case of nutrition, it has been con-
sidered that there could be a natural process of “catch up”, by which children could recover
lost nutrition originated by the impact (Baez et al. 2010) once the emergency has ceased.
Given that the net effect of natural disasters over many dimensions of human well-being
remains an empirical question, there is a broad literature estimating whether there are per-
sistent effects of disasters on different dimensions, including income (Mueller and Osgood
2009; Fishman et al. 2015), poverty (Shahabuddin and Ali 2006), nutrition (Yamano et al.
2005; Cord et al. 2008; Dercon and Porter 2014), health (Maclean et al. 2016; Hikichi et al.
2019; Ogasawara 2019), and education (Zandian et al. 2016; Caruso 2017).
Evidence on the long-run effects of natural disasters on income and poverty is mixed.
For example, Banerjee (2007) finds that the labour income of people residing in areas
flooded for prolonged periods in Bangladesh is between 9 and 30% lower than that of peo-
ple from non-flooded areas, considering a 30 years period (1970–2000). Baez et al. (2015)
find that in the case of Guatemala, exposure to a major tropical storm (2010) increased
income poverty in 18%, as well as labour supply, including child-labour. Yet these effects
were registered only 1 year after the disaster. However, for the case of Brazil, Mueller and
Osgood (2009) report that exposure to extreme rainfall events (droughts or floods) per-
sistently reduces the income of rural households, and the result is robust when consider-
ing migration to urban areas. Alderman et al. (2006; 2009) find that children exposed to
droughts in Zimbabwe and Tanzania have lower incomes in adulthood (7% and 1% lower,
respectively). Shahabuddin and Ali (2006) find in the case of Bangladesh that people resid-
ing in areas most affected by natural disasters have greater persistence of extreme poverty
as compared to those in less affected areas. Notwithstanding that, Ginoux and Menendez
(2016) find that in Indonesia, individuals affected by earthquakes experience short-term
economic losses but recover in the medium run (2–5 years after the earthquake) and even
exhibit welfare gains in the long run (6–12 years).
In the case of nutrition, evidence indicates that natural disasters have significant det-
rimental effects both on short term as well as on long term nutritional measures (Baez
et al. 2010). Moreover, evidence suggests that, contrary to the hypothesis of a potential
catch-up, impacts are long-lasting and they interact with achievements in other dimensions,
such as schooling, cognitive development, productivity and income (Baez et al. 2015). For
example, children born in years with droughts experience 50% more chances of being mal-
nourished in Kenya and 72% more chances of being stunted (low height for age) in Niger
(UNDP 2007). The exposure to a major earthquake in the first months of life in Japan
(1923) was found to be associated with a lower height (0.4–0.6 cm less on average) (Ogasa-
wara 2019). More generally, children have a lower capacity to face environmental shocks,
including less capacity to dissipate heat and protect themselves (Hanna and Oliva 2016).
Moreover, although less consistent, evidence suggests that exposure to natural disasters
increases mortality and morbidity risks, particularly in women and children (Baez et al
2010), and it is also linked to greater chances of suffering some kind of mental disorder in
adulthood (Maclean et al. 2016).
In the education dimension, Ferreira and Schady’s (2008) review finds investments in
schooling to behave counter-cyclically (the substitution effect prevails) in richer countries
and in countries with better developed credit systems, including many Latin American
ones, but pro-cyclically (the income effect prevails) in poorer countries and in those where

13
 F. A. I. González et al.

access to credit is severely limited. In turn, Baez et al’s (2010) review indicate that there is
vast evidence of negative impact of natural disasters on education in developing countries,
which in many cases is found to be long-lasting, impact that seems to be largely driven
by the effect of the shock on nutrition rather than by the decision of parents to withdraw
children from school. For example, Hermida (2011) finds that exposure to a major earth-
quake in Guatemala (1976) in the first 2 years of life reduced by 0.2 the number of years of
study in adulthood and also the average height in the case of boys (0.4 cm smaller for each
additional standard deviation in the intensity with which the earthquake affected the child’s
birth district).
More generally, Caruso (2017)’s comprehensive study on the long-term effects of
natural disasters over education, health, welfare and labour outcomes in 16 Latin Ameri-
can countries, a paper over which this paper builds upon, finds that children in utero and
young children suffer the most the long-lasting negative effects. For years of schooling, he
finds a negative and significant effect of all considered kinds of disasters. In particular, for
example, exposure to floods over the first year of life reduces the average achievement by
0.15 years in the case of small floods, and 0.58 years in the case of large floods.
Thus, so far, empirical evidence indicates that exposure to natural disasters early in life
does have long-term or persistent detrimental impacts on key dimensions of human devel-
opment. These results are consistent with the idea that there exist critical and sensitive
periods in child development, as modelled by Cunha and Heckman (2006), and on which
there is compelling evidence elsewhere (Cunha and Heckman 2006; Currie and Hyson
1999; Almond et al. 2017).
In this context, the present work estimates for the case of Argentina the potential long-
term effects (persistence) of exposure during the first year of life to natural disasters over
four human development outcomes. Two of the outcomes are individual achievements:
completed years of schooling and employment status. The other two outcomes refer to
potential effects beyond the individual, specifically, whether her household is in multidi-
mensional poverty and its poverty intensity. The research hypothesis is that natural disas-
ters persistently reduce the human development of those exposed in their first year of life
compared to their unexposed peers and can also have effects on the households they con-
form. Following Duflo (2001) and Caruso (2017), we estimate a differences in differences
model with cross-sectional data, exploiting spatial variation, between Argentine districts,
and temporal variation, between birth cohorts, that arise from the microdata of the last
National Census of Population, Households and Housing (CNPHV 2010) combined with
the Disaster Inventory System’s (DesInventar) records of the occurrence of natural disas-
ters in the country.
This study contributes to the literature on the long-term effects of disasters. To the best
of our knowledge, this study adds value in three ways. In the first place, it is the first study
to examine the long-term effects of natural disasters in the particular case of Argentina.
Although Caruso (2017) includes Argentina in his study, results correspond to pooled
regressions. Second, unlike most previous work, by using DesInventar database, we do not
analyse the impact of a single disaster but of the complete distribution of disasters, from
the mildest ones to the strongest ones, without imposing a minimum of damage generated
in order to be considered. Third, we study persistent effects not only on individual out-
comes measured once the person achieved adulthood, but also on the experience of joint
deprivations at the household level, as measured by multidimensional poverty. The topic is
especially relevant considering that an increase in the frequency and intensity of disasters
is expected in the future as result of climate change, and poor people are more vulnerable
to disasters.

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Persistent effects of natural disasters on human development:…

Section 2 describes the data sources. Section 3 presents the methodology, detailing the
outcomes of interest, measures of exposure to disasters and the econometric strategy. Sec-
tion 4 presents the results. Finally, Sect. 5 discusses the main conclusions.

2 Sources of information

This paper combines two sources of information: microlevel individual and household data
with registers of occurrence of natural disasters. The microdata comes from a random sam-
ple of the 2010 National Population, Household and Housing Census conducted by the
national institute of statistics (INDEC, as per its initials in Spanish) and published on the
Integrated Public Use Microdata Series platform (IPUMS 2017). These data consists of a
sample of 3,966,245 people, representative of the national population, grouped into 350
districts.2 Although the actual number of districts is 528, those geographical units with
less than 20,000 people are grouped by IPUMS with the neighbouring geographic unit of
smaller population, trying to ensure the confidentiality of the information.
The information on natural disasters comes from the records of the Disaster Inventory
System (DesInventar 2018) produced by the Social Studies Network on disaster preven-
tion in Latin America (LA RED, in Spanish). In the Argentinean case, the record of the
occurrence of natural disasters covers the period 1970–2015, and it is based on information
extracted from national newspapers, especially La Nación and Clarín (Herzer et al. 2004).3
It is worth noting that there are two main databases that contain information on natural
disasters for Latin American countries. One is the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT),
which contains information for over 200 countries, supplied and maintained by the WHO
Collaborating Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the Catho-
lic University of Louvain. The other is DesInventar, which collects information for Latin
American countries. In this paper, we use DesInventar.
Aside from the country-coverage, there are several other methodological differences
between the two databases.4 One fundamental difference is that while EMDAT provides
“large-scale” information for each country, offering a general geographical reference for
the disaster (region), DesInventar provides detailed information of the location of the
event, at the municipal level or equivalent. This particular feature is what makes DesInven-
tar suitable for this study; with EMDAT information, it is not possible to attach individuals
observed in the census data the exposure to natural disasters occurred in their district.
A second important difference between the two natural disasters databases is that a nat-
ural event is registered in EMDAT as a natural disaster if it has caused ten or more deaths,
or if a hundred or more people were affected, or if international aid was requested, or if
state of emergency was declared (CRED 2019). In contrast, DesInventar does not use any
minimum threshold of damage for including the natural event; as long as there is some

2
For language ease, we use the term district to refer to the Argentinean administrative unit called “depar-
tamento” or “partido”, which in some but not all cases coincide with the municipal level of disaggregation.
3
Although DesInventar also includes information about anthropic disasters (accidents, structural collapses,
intoxication, etc.), this work considers only natural disasters.
4
The main reason for the methodological differences is that each database serves a different purpose: EM-
DAT is an international instrument for use in humanitarian aid in the event of an emergency, whereas Des-
Inventar is intended for use in the local and national management of risks (LA RED 2002, p.15).

13
 F. A. I. González et al.

Table 1  Number of records by type of natural disaster considered in Argentina (1970–2015). Source: Own
elaboration based on DesInventar
Disaster group Main type (EMDAT) Type of disaster Records %
(EMDAT) (DesInventar) (DesInventar)

Hydrological Flood Flood 6997 44.41

Meteorological Storm Tempest 3117 19.78
Meteorological Storm Snowstorm 981 6.23
Climatological Wild fire Forestal fire 967 6.14
Climatological Drought Drought 680 4.32
Meteorological Storm Gale 626 3.97
Meteorological Storm Fog 508 3.22
Meteorological Storm Hailstorm 372 2.36
Climatological Extreme temperature-cold wave Frost 370 2.35
Climatological Extreme temperature-heat wave Heat wave 275 1.75
Meteorological Storm Rains 192 1.22
Geophysical Mass-movement-landslide Alluvium 182 1.16
Geophysical Earthquake Earthquake 158 1.00
Other 331 2.10
Argentine total 15,756 100

“Other” includes: volcanic activity, landslide, electric storm, tornado, avalanche, surge, water coastline-
change and sedimentation. According to CRED, geological disasters are events originating from solid earth;
meteorological disasters are events caused by short-lived/small- to meso-scale atmospheric processes;
hydrological disasters are events caused by deviations in the normal water cycle and/or overflow of bodies
of water caused by wind set-up; climatological disasters are events caused by long-lived/meso- to macro-
scale processes (Below et al. 2009)

social loss, the event is included in the database.5 In fact, one of the motivations for con-
structing this database has been to make visible small-scale disasters as well as to “break
down those that affect extensive areas into the multiple, differentiable disasters they really
are and the specific nature of the significance of their impact on each community affected”
(LA RED 2002, p. 9). Despite this difference, it is possible to link each event contained
in the DesInventar database to the EMDAT’s classification of events according to disaster
group, main type and sub-type, as detailed in Table 1.
Finally, a third difference between EMDAT and DesInventar is that EMDAT uses sec-
ondary sources of information: international aid bodies (OCHA), national foreign aid bod-
ies (OFDA), insurance companies and sometimes also information provided by the govern-
ments of the countries affected, academic institutions or NGOs. DesInventar, in turn, uses
sources of national origin, most commonly, newspapers, sometimes in combination with
official government data.
Table 1 presents a summary of the different natural disasters registered for Argentina
in the period 1970–2015 in the DesInventar database, according to the disaster classifi-
cation category developed by CRED (see Below et al. 2009). It is observed that floods

5
This methodological difference reflects a different concept of risk and disaster between the two databases.
While in EMDAT the defining feature is the natural phenomenon itself and not the conditions that make the
phenomenon to cause damage, in DesInventar, a disaster is a manifestation of a risk—understood as a social
construction—which makes the natural event to generate losses (LA RED 2002).

13
Persistent effects of natural disasters on human development:…

Fig. 1  Number of disasters by region of Argentina and their percent out of the total number of disasters
registered between 1970 and 2015. Source: Own elaboration based on DesInventar. The Northeast region
(NEA) includes the provinces of Misiones, Corrientes, Chaco and Formosa. The Northwest region (NOA)
covers the provinces of Salta, Jujuy, Tucumán, Santiago del Estero, La Rioja and Catamarca. The Center
region (Centro) includes the provinces of Entre Ríos, Santa Fe, Córdoba and the province of Buenos Aires.
Cuyo covers the provinces of Mendoza, San Juan and San Luis. Patagonia includes Rio Negro, Neuquén,
La Pampa, Chubut, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego

13
 F. A. I. González et al.

and tempests are the types of disasters with the highest number of records, with almost
two-thirds of the total. Logically, they also have a broad participation in the records of
mortality and economic losses according to DesInventar.
Figure 1 depicts the distribution of the natural disasters across the five broad geo-
graphical regions of Argentina. One can see that the Centro and Buenos Aires City
regions have the highest frequency of the occurrence of natural disasters; together they
account for over a half of the recorded events over the study period.

3 Methodology

3.1 Individual outcomes: schooling, employment and multidimensional poverty

In this paper, we study whether exposure to natural disasters in the first year of life has
persistent impact on outcomes of human development. The dimensions over which we
evaluate such impact are constrained by the available information in the Census data. Not-
withstanding that, the information allows considering relevant dimensions of well-being.
In particular, we follow the Multidimensional Poverty Index for Latin America (MPI-LA)
proposed in Santos et al. (2015) and Santos and Villatoro (2018), which is a particular
specification of the methodology developed by Alkire and Foster (2011).
The MPI-LA, designed to be computed with regular household surveys in Latin Amer-
ica, comprises thirteen indicators across five dimensions: housing, basic services, educa-
tion, employment and social security, and living standard. As in this paper we use census
data, not all indicators are available. Specifically, neither the income poverty indicator nor
the indicator on access to social security can be included, as the census does not collect
information on these indicators. Thus, the considered MPI is composed only of non-mone-
tary indicators.6 The other eleven indicators can be computed; these are detailed in Table 2.
The MPI-LA indicators are defined at the household level. While the indicators of hous-
ing characteristics, access to basic services and durable goods refer to shared outcomes,
the education and employment indicators entail assumptions on intra-household positive or
negative externalities. For example, if no adult 20–59 years old in the household has com-
pleted 9 years of education and no adult of 60 years or more completed primary education,
all household members are considered deprived.
The eleven MPI-LA indicators are used in three ways, shaping the outcomes of inter-
est over which the impact of natural disasters is studied. In the first place, they are used to
identify individuals living in multidimensionally poor households, i.e. their poverty status.
In the second place, they are used to consider their poverty intensity. In the third place, we
use the MPI-LA as a reference framework to consider two indicators at the individual—
and not the household—level. Let us explain each considered outcome in turn.
Letxhj ∈ ℝ+ be the achievement of household h = 1, … , H in each of the eleven MPI
indicators j = 1, … , 11, and let zj be the deprivation cut-off of indicator j. Deprivation of
household h in indicator j is defined as g0hj = 1 when xhj < zj , and g0hj = 0 otherwise. Then,
the deprivation of each household is weighted by the indicator’s weight, given by wj , such
that wj = 1. In this case, each of the 11 indicators is equally weighted, as it can be seen
∑
j

6
On the positive side, for the case of Argentina, censuses collect information on durable goods, which is
not available in the main household survey of the country (Encuesta Permanente de Hogares).

13
 Table 2  Indicators of the multidimensional poverty index and its weighting. Source: Own elaboration based on Santos and Villatoro (2018)
Dimensions Deprivation thresholds Weights (wj ) (%)

1. Housing 27.27
Housing materials Households with dirt floor or unspecified roofing materials 9.09
People per room Households with 3 or more people per room 9.09
Housing tenure Households that live in freely ceded houses 9.09
2. Basics services 27.27
Improved water source Households with piped water outside the field, well water without a mechanical pump, water provided by tank 9.09
truck, rainwater, river, stream or spring water
Improved sanitation Households without bathroom, shared bathroom or bathroom without excreta disposal system 9.09
Energy Households that use wood or coal as fuel for cooking 9.09
3. Living standard 9.09
Persistent effects of natural disasters on human development:…

Durable goods Households without any of the following goods: computer, refrigerator or telephone 9.09
4. Educación 27.27
Children’s school attendance Households where at least one child between 6 and 17 years old does not attend school 9.09
Schooling gap Households with at least one child between 6 and 17 years old who is behind more than 2 years with respect to the 9.09
grade for his/her age
Adult schooling achievement Households where no member between the ages of 20 and 59 has at least 9 years of education or no member of 9.09
60 years or more with full primary
5. Employment 9.09
Employment Households with at least one unemployed member between the ages of 15 and 65 years 9.09

13
 F. A. I. González et al.

in the third column of Table 2. This implies that the housing, basic services and education
dimensions weigh the same (with 27.27%), whereas the living standard (as measured by
durable goods) and employment dimension weight 9.09%. Next, a deprivation score is
computed for each household, defined as the weighted sum of deprivations ch = j=1 wj g0hj .
∑11
With this score, the multidimensionally poor households are identified using a second cut-
off, the poverty cut-off, denoted by k, which represents the proportion of minimum depri-
vation a household must experience in order to be identified as poor. That is, a household is
poor when ch ≥ k.7 In line with the MPI-LA, in this paper we use a poverty cut-off of 25%.
This implies that a household needs to experience at least three deprivations in order to be
identified as multidimensionally poor. Although quite demanding, the threshold identifies a
group of highly deprived people, experiencing several simultaneous deprivations.
Now we can define the first outcome of interest: poverty status. Let cih be the deprivation
score of individual i = 1, … , n; she is defined as poor if the deprivation score of her house-
hold is equal or greater than k:

pi = 𝕀 cih ≥ k
( )

where 𝕀(.) is an indicator function, such that if the condition holds pi = 1, and pi = 0
otherwise.
The second outcome of interest is the poverty intensity of the household where the indi-
vidual lives, and this is given by the censored deprivation score cih (k), which is the depriva-
tion score of those who have been identified as poor. Specifically, cih (k) = cih if cih ≥ k , and
cih (k) = 0 otherwise.
The third and fourth outcome of interest are within the MPI framework but depart from
its specification in that we use two indicators at the individual level: being unemployed
(rather than living in a household where someone is unemployed) and years of schooling
achieved. Unemployment is defined in the census data as not having worked in the previous
week for at least an hour and declaring not to be employed8.
In this way, we are testing the impact of exposure to natural disasters at two levels of
outcomes. First, we consider the impact over individual outcomes of employment and
schooling, perhaps with a more obvious and direct link. Yet, we also test the impact of
early exposure to natural disasters over outcomes at the household level. Although both are
connected, observing a detrimental impact over indicators at the household level may be
interpreted not just as a long-lasting but also as an external negative effect of the disaster
over family members that were not exposed themselves to the event.

3.2 Accumulated exposure to disasters, weighted by severity

In one of the models presented in Sect. 3.3, we will use a variable that measures accumu-
lated exposure to natural disasters weighted by their severity, under the intuitive assump-
tion that a person exposed to several and more severe shocks is more likely to experience

7
As it is now well-known, the identification of the poor in the counting approach can use a union crite-
rion, which requires setting k = min wj , or, an intersection criterion, which requires setting k equal to the
( )
total number of considered indicators, or an intermediate criterion, setting a k value in between those two
extremes.
8
About 15 thousand people out of one million have not worked in the previous week but declare to be
employed (they may have leave of absence for some reason for example) and are thus considered to be
employed.

13
Persistent effects of natural disasters on human development:…

long-lasting effects than another person exposed to just one shock and or less severe event.
The indicator weights each type of natural disaster by the average damage it provokes. Ide-
ally, we would like to weight each natural disaster by the severity of its specific impact.
However, DesInventar records have a large number of missing values in the indicators that
would allow quantifying the individual severity of each event. Thus, we rely on weighting
by the severity of the type of disaster rather than by the severity of the event itself.
Let e = 1, … , E denote the type of disaster occurred, according to DesInventar types
detailed in column 3 of Table 1. Let z = 1, … , Ze denote the number of occurred disasters
of each type. Let d denote the district and t denote the year. To build the variable of accu-
mulated weighted natural disasters Adt for each district d and year t , we proceed in three
steps.
In the first place, we define a disaster type-specific weight We, which is a simple aver-
age of the proportion of total deaths recorded by natural disasters between 1970 and 2015
that were attributed to disaster of type e, denoted as Me, and the proportion of total people
exposed to natural disasters between 1970 and 2015, who were exposed to disaster of type
e, denoted as Pe.

(1)
( )
We = Me + Pe ∕2

Next, we define, for each district and year, a disaster-type severity measure, denoted
as Sedt , given by the aggregate proportion of eight infrastructure categories considered in
the DesInventar database that were affected by disasters of type e. The eight infrastruc-
ture categories are: schools, hospitals, aid, transport, communications, water infrastructure,
sewage infrastructure, and energy infrastructure. Aid here refers to infrastructure for emer-
gency response such as fire departments and civil defense dependencies. Sedt is given by:
8 Ze
( i )
∑ ∑ 𝕀 Ledtz >0
Sedt = (2)
i=1 z=1
8

where 𝕀 Ledtz > 0 is an indicator function that takes value 1 if the z event of type e
( i )

(occurred in district d in year t ) has caused damage to at least one element in that infra-
structure category, that is if Ledtz
i
> 0, where L stands for “loss”, and it is 0 otherwise.9 We
use an indicator function of this type because numerous records of DesInventar indicate
only if the event in question caused damage or not in any element of the analysed category,
without specifying the number of damaged elements or magnitude of the damage.
Finally, the variable of accumulated weighted natural disasters Adt for each district d and
year t is defined as:
E
∑
Adt = Sedt We (3)
e=1

Note that the double weighting given by the product of a disaster-type-specific weight
We and disaster-type severity measure for each district and year a introduces a higher
degree of continuity in the definition of the accumulated weighted natural disasters.

9
For example,( iif a certain
) disaster (of type e, occurred in district d in year t ) caused damage in at least one
school, then 𝕀 Ledtz > 0 = 1, for i = schools.

13
 F. A. I. González et al.

3.3 Eonometric model

Given the census data information on the district of residence along with the age of
the person, combined with the DesInventar information on the occurrence of natural
disasters at the district level, it is possible to estimate the effect of exposure to natu-
ral disasters in the first year of life over the outcomes detailed in Sect. 3.1, estimat-
ing a differences-in-differences model (DD). As in Duflo (2001), who also estimates a
DD model with cross-sectional data, temporal variation comes from the birth cohorts,
whereas spatial variation comes from district of residence, which is assumed to be the
same as the district of birth, assumption which is discussed and evaluated in Sect. 3.4.
People born in years and districts affected by at least one natural disaster are consid-
ered as exposed, i.e. they constitute the treatment group, whereas people born in non-
affected districts or in years without disasters are considered as unexposed, constituting
the control group. The basic assumption of the model is that in the absence of treat-
ment (exposure to natural disasters), the trends of the variables of interest in control and
treatment group would be the same—parallel paths assumption—(Angrist and Pischke
2008). In other words, the average change in the control group represents the counter-
factual change of the treatment group if no natural disaster had occurred. Therefore, any
difference in trends—after treatment—can be causally attributed to the treatment itself.
Considering the above, the DD model is estimated from the following equation:
litd = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 Exposedtd + 𝜕d + �t + 𝜋Xitd + 𝜇itd (4)
where litd is the outcome of interest for the person i born in year t in district d; Exposedtd
is a dummy variable that takes value 1 if district d experienced at least one natural disaster
during year t in which individual i was born; 𝜕d are district fixed effects; ∅t are birth cohort
fixed effects; Xitd is a vector of control variables (sex and literacy), and 𝜇itd is the error term
of the model.
The model is estimated for those born in Argentina (in the case of foreigners it is
not possible to determine the exposure during their first year of life) between the years
1970 and 1992. The oldest cohort (1970) is defined based on the availability of records
of natural disasters in DesInventar (1970–2015 period), while the newest cohort (1992)
is established in order to assess the four considered outcomes (educational achievement,
unemployment status, poverty status and intensity of poverty) for those who should
have finished their basic schooling stage at the time of the last census (2010).
Equation (4) is estimated for the four outcomes of interest described in Sect. 3.1.
Two of them are strictly at the individual level: number of years of formal education
declared by each person, and whether the person is unemployed (a binary variable that
takes value 1 if the person is unemployed and 0 in other cases). The unemployment
status is evaluated only for people belonging to the economically active population (i.e.
those employed or unemployed). The other two outcomes relate to the household where
the individual belongs: the poverty status is a binary variable that takes value 1 if the
person is identified as multidimensionally poor, as defined in Sect. 3.1 and 0 otherwise.
The intensity of poverty, evaluated only for those identified as poor, is a continuous
variable defined in the interval [0.25,1], also defined in Sect. 3.1, where a higher value
implies a greater amount of weighted deprivation; an intensity equal to 1 implies that
the person has deprivations in all considered indicators. For the variables of education
and intensity of poverty, we proceed with a linear regression, while for poverty and

13
Persistent effects of natural disasters on human development:…

unemployment status we use logistic regressions because they are binary dependent
variables.
If the hypothesis of persistent negative effects derived from exposure to natural dis-
asters is verified, the estimated coefficient 𝛽1 will be negative in the case of years of
education and positive in the other cases.
Equation (4) is estimated for exposure to all kinds of natural disasters but also for group
of disaster as detailed in Table 1 separately, namely: geophysical (earthquakes, volcanic
activity), hydrological (floods, avalanches, landslides, among others), meteorological
(storms, heatwave, fog, frost, rain, storm, among others) and climatological (droughts, for-
est fires, among others). From this disaggregation, it is possible to identify the group of
disasters that have greater consequences on the outcomes of interest.
Additionally, for the group of people that have been exposed to at least one natural dis-
aster, we estimate Eq. (5), which instead of containing the exposure variable uses vari-
able Adt defined in Sect. 3.2. Adt measures the accumulated occurrence of natural disasters
in district d in year t, weighted by the severity of each type of disaster. Naturally, it is
expected that exposure to a higher number and more severe type of disasters will have big-
ger detrimental impact on the considered outcomes.
litd = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 Adt + 𝜕d + �t + 𝜋Xitd + 𝜇itd (5)
In order to evaluate the robustness of the results, Eq. (4) is also estimated consider-
ing the exposure to natural disasters at different ages up to 18 years old. In addition, we
consider a placebo test that involves identifying as affected those in the control group who
were born in odd months. It is expected to observe no significant differences in this case.

3.4 Methodological assumptions

In the two models detailed in Sect. 3.3, it is assumed that the district of residence at the
time when the census was performed is the same as the district of birth. This is because
the census data does not provide information on the district of birth. Clearly, this is not a
minor assumption, as internal migration could bias the estimates whenever the decision
to migrate is correlated with the occurrence of natural disasters. However, the assumption
may not be serious if the migratory movements respond to other factors. Thus, the reasona-
bleness of this assumption needs scrutiny.
In the first place, it must be noted that previous studies have based their estimates on
the same assumption finding it to be reasonable. For example, when studying the persistent
effects of natural disasters on child health in Japan (also using a DD model), Ogasawara
(2019) assumes that individuals were born in the same district in which they attend school
at the time of the survey used as source of information. This assumption was validated with
census data. Similarly, in his study on the effects of natural disasters over different out-
comes in 16 Latin American countries including Argentina, Caruso (2017) also assumes
that the district of residence at the time of the census is the same as that of birth for coun-
tries for which that information is not available. Interestingly, Caruso (2017) tests this
assumption in countries for which the census did collect information on district of birth
and finds that the average classification error is 7%. In turn, Baez et al. (2015)’s results of
the impact of tropical storm Agatha in Guatemala are robust to the possibility of endog-
enous migration, suggesting that there is no evidence to argue that internal migration is
correlated with the occurrence of natural disasters.

13
 F. A. I. González et al.

Table 3  Region of birth and residence for internal migrants in % (2001). Source: Own elaboration based on
CNPHV (2001)-IPUMS (2019)
Region of residence
Region of birth NEA NOA Buenos Aires Centro Cuyo Patagonia

NEA – 3.51 11.64 80.83 0.74 3.28

NOA 2.86 – 15.79 69.48 5.78 6.09
Buenos Aires 1.68 2.22 – 93.27 1.05 1.78
Centro 11.52 11.49 52.25 – 6.68 18.06
Cuyo 1.11 11.53 8.96 52.97 – 25.43
Patagonia 2.94 5.55 21.15 60.63 9.73 –

Table 4  Means comparison for control and treatment group. Source: Own elaboration based on CNPHV
(2010)-IPUMS (2019)
Control Treatment Means difference

Proportion of women 50.54 50.72 − 0.18

(0.0639) (0.0607)
Average Age 28.50 27.92 0.58***
(0.0086) (0.0078)
Average number of household members 4.39 4.26 0.14***
(0.0027) (0.0025)
Iliteracy rate 1.12 0.93 0.20***
(0.0135) (0.0116)
Average years of education 10.94 11.47 − 0.53***
(0.5397) (0.5076)
Activity rate 75.80 77.77 − 1.97***
(0.0548) (0.0504)
Unemployment rate 5.50 6.29 − 0.79***
(0.03) (0.03)
Multidimensional Poverty incidence 18.12 16.09 2.03***
(0.0493) (0.0445)
Average Multidimensional Poverty intensity 35.63 34.42 1.21***
(0.0366) (0.0367)

Standard errors in parentheses. *significant at 10%, **significant at 5%, ***significant at 1%

In the second place, although the 2010 census data used in this paper does not provide
information on district of birth, the previous census, performed in 2001, does include infor-
mation on province of birth. These data indicate that although 21% of people of 18 years
old or more reside in a different province from the one where she was born, the direction
of migration is predominantly from regions less affected by natural disasters (NEA, NOA,
Cuyo and Patagonia) to the regions more affected by natural disasters (Buenos Aires City
and Centro region). This can be seen in Table 3 which presents the migration matrix with
proportions computed over total internal migrants. It can be seen that, for each region, the
migratory flow takes place from NEA, NOA, Cuyo and Patagonia towards the Centro and

13
Persistent effects of natural disasters on human development:…

Table 5  Persistence effects of disaster exposure (cohorts 1970–1992) aggregate and by class of disaster.
Source: Own elaboration based on DesInventar and CNPHV (2010)-IPUMS (2019)
Years of education Unemployment Poverty Intensity of poverty

Exposure to disasters − 0.0308936*** 0.0205317** 0.0461536*** 0.0002722

(0.0082712) (0.0097537) (0.0067879) (0.0005828)
N 1,175,360 991,831 1,290,744 152,831
R2 0.1650 0.0734 0.2476 0.1682
Fixed effects Yes Yes Yes Yes
Exposure to disasters by disaster group
Geological 0.0356054 0.0712243 0.0954602*** − 0.0056385
(0.0476309) (0.051807) (0.0369438) (0.0041757)
Hydrological − 0.0339592*** 0.0118915 0.0407384*** − 0.000398
(0.0082453) (0.0094264) (0.0068483) (0.0005843)
Meteorological − 0.0012841 0.0259597*** 0.0246706 *** 0.0005954
(0.0088651) (0.0099505) (0.0075437) (0.0006381)
Climatological − 0.0181222 − 0.0187506 0.0122104 0.002543*
(0.0242515) (0.0262512) ( 0.0198665) (0.0016155)

Standard errors in parentheses. *Significant at 10%, **significant at 5%, ***significant at 1%

Regression for years of education excludes people who did not specify the number of years approved
(example: they respond incomplete primary or do not remember). In the regression of unemployment, the
inactive are excluded and in the regression of poverty intensity the non-poor are excluded. The number of
observations and R2 of these regressions are reported in Table 9 in the "Appendix"

Buenos Aires City regions which, as presented in Fig. 1, exhibits higher frequency of natu-
ral disasters. Thus, it is reasonable to think that the decision to migrate responds to other
type of incentives—such as labour opportunities and educational and health services—and
does not correlate with the occurrence of natural disasters. Therefore, we understand that
the assumption that the district of residence coincides with that of birth would not produce
bias in the estimates of the impact of exposure to natural disasters in the first year of life.
Finally, before proceeding with the estimation of the models we present descriptive sta-
tistics for both groups (control and treatment) in Table 4 considering the four outcomes of
interest plus other variables.
It is observed that the individuals in the treatment group, that is, those who were
exposed to a natural disaster in the year they were born, are on average 1 year younger,
have on average, smaller household size, have completed on average more years of educa-
tion, have a lower illiteracy rate, and a lower incidence and intensity of poverty, but exhibit
a higher unemployment rate. All differences are statistically significant. These differences
(favourable to the exposed group) are intuitive considering that the regions that exhibit
higher frequency of natural disasters—Buenos Aires city and Centro region—are precisely
those that exhibit better performance in development indicators in terms of education and
poverty. This suggests that it is not possible to argue that the treatment group has worse
results in the variables of interest leading to a spurious effect of disasters on these out-
comes. Moreover, we avoid any bias by using district and birth cohort fixed effects.

13
 F. A. I. González et al.

Table 6  Persistence in the effects of accumulated weighted natural disasters. Source: Own elaboration
based on DesInventar and CNPHV (2010)-IPUMS (2019)
Disaster class Year of education Unemployment Poverty Poverty intensity

All disasters − 0.0012067** 0.0008011 0.0006175 0.0000284

(0.043) (0.0007795) (0.0004679) (0.0000375)
Geological − 2.3045 4.9608 0.125546*** 0.6214739*
(4.6382) (4.7055) (0.042917) (0.3660813)
Hydrological − 0.0012246** − 0.0005711 − 0.0006857 − 0.0000166
(0.0006135) (0.0008175) (0.0004855) (0.0000396)
Meteorological − 0.0656667*** 0.011557 0.0198157 0.0034011**
(0.0264585) (0.0312226) (0.0227005) (0.0017181)
Climatological − 1.8779*** 1.4943* 0.1285426 0.0132905
(0.6729287) (0.8204031) (0.5406577) (0.0443297)

Standard errors in parentheses. * significant at 10%, ** significant at 5%, *** significant at 1%

Regression for years of education excludes people who did not specify the number of years approved
(example: they respond incomplete primary or do not remember). In the regression of unemployment, the
inactive are excluded and in the regression of poverty intensity the non-poor are excluded. The number of
observations and R2 of these regressions are reported in Table 10 in the "Appendix"

4 Results

Table 5 presents the estimation results of Eq. (4) for each of the four considered outcomes:
educational achievement, unemployment status, multidimensional poverty status and the
intensity of poverty, first considering exposure to any class of disaster and then disaggre-
gating by group of disaster.
It can be observed that early exposure in life to natural disasters has a negative and sig-
nificant effect on the completed years of schooling. Specifically, people exposed to natural
disasters during their first year of life have 0.03 less years of education than unexposed
people, controlling for district, birth cohort, sex and literacy. Exposure to natural disas-
ters in the first year of life also increases the chances of being unemployed (OR = 1.02),
and it is associated with an increase in the chances of living in a multidimensionally poor
household in adulthood (OR = 1.05). However, there seems to be no significant effect on
the intensity of multidimensional poverty. The observed effects, although statistically sig-
nificant, have a reduced absolute value, lower than the impact found in other studies (Her-
mida (2011) for Guatemala, for example), but in the middle of the range of impacts found
by Caruso (2017) for a pool of 16 Latin American countries.
When disaggregating by disaster group, we find that the long run effect over the differ-
ent outcomes differs by group of disaster. The detrimental impact over completed years of
study comes only from hydrological disasters, whereas the effect of increasing the chances
to be unemployed comes only from meteorological disasters. The increased chances of
living in a multidimensionally poor household, however, are affected by three of the four
classes of natural disasters: geological, hydrological and meteorological.
Table 6 presents the estimation results of Eq. (5) which estimates, for people who were
exposed to at least one disaster in their first year of life, the impact of accumulated expo-
sure to natural disasters, weighted by the severity of each type of disaster, as defined in
Sect. 3.2. We find that the higher the number and severity of natural disasters to which an
individual was exposed in her first year of life, the lower the completed years of schooling.

13
Persistent effects of natural disasters on human development:…

When distinguishing by disaster group, we find that the result holds except for the case of
geological disasters, for which accumulated exposure shows no significant impact. We also
find that accumulated exposure to geological disasters in the first year of life weighed by
their severity significantly increases the probability of being multidimensionally poor in
adulthood. However, we find no significant effect of accumulated exposure to disasters on
unemployment status, except for climatological disasters, for which we only find a weakly
significant effect, increasing the probability of being unemployed. Interestingly, while in
Table 5 we saw that exposure to disasters in the first year of life has no impact on pov-
erty intensity, in Table 6 we find that for those who were exposed, exposure to a higher
and more severe type of meteorological disasters does have a significant impact, increasing
poverty intensity.
We perform two kinds of robustness analysis. In the first place, we estimate Eq. (4) con-
sidering exposure to natural disasters not only in the first year of life, but also during gesta-
tion, and in each of the first 18 years of life. Results are presented in Table 7 and suggest
very interesting results. First, the effect of exposure to natural disasters during the first year
of life holds for the three outcomes as in Table 5. But now we see that the exposure to
natural disasters during the gestational period (“in utero”) also has significant long-lasting
impact on schooling (although at the 10% level), on unemployment, on the poverty status,
and on poverty intensity (for which exposure at age 0–1 is not significant). This is coinci-
dent with Caruso (2017)’s findings for a pool of 16 Latin American countries.
In general, exposure to disasters at older ages does not have highly significant impacts,
although there are some effects of exposure at young ages on years of schooling and on the
chances of being multidimensionally poor. The fact that years of education and poverty
status are the outcomes that exhibit most cases of persistent effects is consistent with the
idea that living conditions in early childhood are especially relevant. These results need to
be further investigated as they provide further support to the notion of sensible and critical
periods during child development modelled by Cunha and Heckman (2006).
Finally, we perform a false experiment or placebo fictitiously considering as affected by
a natural disaster in their first year of life those who were born in odd months (treatment),
and compare them with people born in even months (control). As reported in Table 8, we
find no significant effect in this case, suggesting that the findings above are not caused by a
spurious correlation.

5 Discussion and conclusions

In this paper, we evaluate whether exposure to natural disasters during the first year of life
has persistent effects on human development outcomes in Argentina, for disasters occurred
between 1970 and 1992. Using the microdata of the 2010 National Census of Population,
Households and Housing (CNPHV 2010) and the Disaster Inventory System’s (DesInven-
tar) records of the occurrence of natural disasters in the country, we estimate a differences
in differences model, exploiting the temporal and spatial variation given by the (exogenous)
exposure of different birth cohorts to natural disasters in their first year of life, in different
districts. Fixed effects are considered by cohorts and districts as well as control variables.
The paper contributes to the scarce literature on persistent effects of natural disasters
for the particular case of Argentina, and it is innovative with respect to other papers in
two ways. First, by using DesInventar data, it considers the full range of natural disasters,
from those with smaller to those with bigger direct immediate impacts. Second, we study

13
 F. A. I. González et al.

Table 7  Persistence in disaster exposure at different ages. Source: own elaboration based on DesInventar y
CNPHV (2010)-IPUMS (2019)
Exposed at age: Years of education Unemployment Poverty Poverty intensity

In utero − 0.0138299* 0.0304675*** 0.0309137*** 0.0014081**

(0.0083423) (0.0097483) (0.0068284) (0.0005907)
0–1 − 0.0308936*** 0.0205317** 0.0461536*** 0.0002722
(0.0082712) (0.0097537) (0.0067879) (0.0005828)
1–2 − 0.0176007* 0.0137183 0.0331543*** 0.0005644
(0.0105032) (0.0148881) (0.0098604) (0.0008542)
2–3 − 0.0162637* 0.0012521 0.0145532 − 0.0012812
(0.0090808) (.0206829) (0.0132746) (0.0011248)
3–4 − 0.0027713 0.0010277 0.028721* − 0.0010763
(0.0218109) (0.0272674) (0.0169641) (0.001436)
4–5 − 0.098092*** 0.0263303 0.0445975** 0.0023195
(0.0275097) (0.0345919) (0.0215902) (0.0018292)
5–6 − 0.0087698 − 0.044528 0.0384765 0.0013444
(0.0329411) (0.0432918) (0.0261182) (0.0022128)
6–7 − 0.0117894 0.0758211 0.0637588** 0.0029437
(0.0395835) (0.0515419) (0.0311537) (0.002617)
7–8 − 0.0846353* 0.0238492 0.0102665 − 0.0017277
(0.0467131) (0.0618105) (0.0386754) (0.0030484)
8–9 0.0071966 − 0.0274278 − 0.0310282 0.0025884
(0.0557821) (0.0744498) (0.0464326) (0.0036426)
9–10 0.0177537 0.011256 − 0.0863897 0.0007626
(0.0638452) (0.0882043) (0.0534638) (0.0042195)
10–11 − 0.0341091 0.1779995** − 0.0218186 − 0.0004782
(0.0716845) (0.0921554) (0.0595362) (0.0043509)
11–12 0.0417602 − 0.054692 0.036413 0.0082674*
(0.0818846) (0.1093673) (0.0664603) (0.0049764)
12–13 − 0.1263012 − 0.0343202 0.1133331 − 0.0104545
(0.108258) (0.1512717) (0.090604) (0.0080507)
13–14 − 0.0948251 − 0.1243855 0.0451545 − 0.012493
(0.1264688) (0.1996567) (0.1083535) (0.0083157)
14–15 0.05991329 − 0.204241 − 0.0533625 0.0035677
(0.1776694) (0.2658864) (0.1860258) (0.0146733)
15–16 0.06692621 0.2262524 − 0.05746106 0.0068058
(02057484) (0.3275448) (0.2111998) (0.0170402)
16–17 0.0873919 0.4977716 0.2963707 0.0382305**
(0.3607673) (0.542326) (0.2589795) (0.0194704)
17–18 − 0.0288309 0.24374 0.2717837 − 0.018055
(0.3779134) (0.78669) (0.30164) (0.0147748)

Standard errors in parentheses. *Significant at 10%, **significant at 5%, ***significant at 1%. Regression
for years of education excludes people who did not specify the number of years approved (example: they
respond incomplete primary or do not remember). In the regression of unemployment, the inactive are
excluded and in the regression of poverty intensity the non-poor are excluded.

13
Persistent effects of natural disasters on human development:…

Table 8  Placebo test comparing birth month. Source: Own elaboration based on DesInventar and CNPHV
(2010)-IPUMS (2019)
Years of education Unemployment Poverty Intensity of poverty

Exposed − 0.0105961 − 0.0217706 0.0046517 0.000038

(0.0095113) (0.0204826) (0.0079535) (0.0006902)
N 613,868 527,182 677,908 70,242
R2 0.1480 0.0705 0.2644 0.1637
Fixed effects Yes Yes Yes Yes

Standard errors in parentheses. *significant at 10%, **significant at 5%, ***significant at 1%

Regression for years of education excludes people who did not specify the number of years approved
(example: they respond incomplete primary or do not remember). In the regression of unemployment, the
inactive are excluded and in the regression of poverty intensity the non-poor are excluded

persistent effects not only on individual outcomes measured when the person achieved
adulthood, but also on the experience of joint deprivations at the household level, as meas-
ured by multidimensional poverty.
We find that exposure to natural disasters very early in life significantly reduces the
number of years of schooling achieved in 0.03 years and increases the chances of being
unemployed when adult. Importantly, we find that the individual experience of a nat-
ural disaster goes beyond individual outcomes, increasing the chances of living in a
multidimensionally poor household, defined here as exhibiting three or more depriva-
tions out of eleven indicators belonging to five dimensions (housing, access to basic
services, education, living standards and employment). We do not find, however, impact
over poverty intensity, although it must be noted that the poverty cut-off to be identified
as multidimensionally poor demands several simultaneous deprivations, i.e. there is an
implicit intensity requirement in the identification of the poor. Moreover, and in line
with Caruso (2017)’s results, in our robustness analysis, we do find significant impact of
exposure to natural disasters during gestation over poverty intensity.
When distinguishing by class of natural disaster, we find that exposure to hydrologi-
cal events (floods in the case of Argentina) are the ones causing the reduction in school-
ing achievements, whereas exposure to meteorological events (storms, heatwave, fog,
frost, rain) are the ones causing the effects on unemployment; in turn, exposure to either
hydrological, meteorological or geological events increases the chances of poverty. We
also find that, among those who have been exposed to at least one disaster in the first
year of life, the higher the number and severity of natural disasters to which they were
exposed, the more the detrimental impact on schooling and on the chances of multidi-
mensional poverty.
In sum, our findings indicate first that in Argentina, being exposed to a natural dis-
aster in the first year of life does have persistent negative effects on educational and
employment outcomes achieved over life. Second, although the effects are relatively
small in magnitude, they are suggestive, as they were obtained considering the full
range of natural disasters, from those of small to those of big direct immediate impacts.
In other words, exposure to even one mild natural event in the first year of life can
have long-lasting consequences. Third, the exposure of an individual to a natural dis-
aster very early in life has external negative effects on others who were not necessarily

13
 F. A. I. González et al.

exposed themselves, as evidenced on the impact over the probability of living in a mul-
tidimensionally poor household.
In the context of climate change in which an increase in the frequency and sever-
ity in the occurrence of natural disasters is expected, our results are a call of atten-
tion, indicating that it is of outmost importance to design and implement public policies
towards increasing the country’s preparedness and resilience to natural disasters. Given
that floods are the most frequent event, improving drainage systems in most frequently
affected areas should be a priority. Additionally, better protocols and coping mechanism
should be designed in order to lessen the consequences once a disaster has occurred,
especially protecting infants, young children and pregnant women, as implied by our
results.
In future research, it is worth studying the reasons and channels through which cer-
tain classes of natural disasters (hydrological) impact more on education, whereas others
(meteorological) on employment and virtually all on multidimensional poverty. Moreover,
it would be interesting to further link our results with evidence elsewhere on the existence
of sensible and critical periods during child development (Cunha and Heckman 2006).
In terms of improvements of the data sources, it would be desirable to count with infor-
mation on each person’s district of birth in the census data so as not to have to rely on
assuming that the district of residence coincides with that of birth. It would also be impor-
tant to continue updating DesInventar registers to more recent years as well as improving
those indicators in the database that allow quantifying the severity of each specific disaster.

Acknowledgements We are grateful to Dr. Marina Tortul (IIESS UNS-CONICET) for technical assistance
in the construction of the georeferenced map. We thank ANPCyT-PICT 2079 for research support.

Appendix

See Tables 9 and 10.

Table 9  Number of observations and Adjusted ­R2 for regressions of Table 5. Source: Own elaboration
based on DesInventar and CNPHV (2010)-IPUMS (2019)
Disaster class Variable Years of education Unemployment Poverty Poverty intensity

Geological R2 0.16 0.07 0.25 0.17

Hydrological R2 0.17 0.07 0.24 0.14
Meteorological R2 0.16 0.08 0.20 0.15
Climatological R2 0.16 0.07 0.25 0.15
N 1,175,360 991,831 1,290,744 152,831

Regression for years of education excludes people who did not specify the number of years approved
(example: they respond incomplete primary or do not remember). In the regression of unemployment, the
inactive are excluded and in the regression of poverty intensity the non-poor are excluded

13
Persistent effects of natural disasters on human development:…

Table 10  Number of observations and Adjusted ­R2 for regressions of Table 6. Source: own elaboration
based on DesInventar and CNPHV (2010)-IPUMS (2019)
Disaster class Variable Years of education Unemployment Poverty Poverty intensity

All disasters N 613,868 527,182 677,908 70,242

R2 0.10 0.05 0.26 0.15
Geological N 6,870 5,628 7,381 907
R2 0.10 0.04 0.14 0.04
Hydrological N 415,19 353,659 458,565 49,165
R2 0.10 0.05 0.29 0.17
Meteorological N 369,901 325,225 410,000 36,842
R2 0.08 0.05 0.22 0.11
Climatological N 28,163 24,010 30,694 3,552
R2 0.06 0.04 0.10 0.18

Standard errors in parentheses. *significant at 10%, **significant at 5%, ***significant at 1%

Regression for years of education excludes people who did not specify the number of years approved
(example: they respond incomplete primary or do not remember). In the regression of unemployment, the
inactive are excluded and in the regression of poverty intensity the non-poor are excluded

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