The Effect of Aggregate Economic Shocks on Child Health Outcomes: The Case of 20 Sentinel sites in Ethiopia
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Date
2022-02
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A.A.U
Abstract
Ethiopia has suffered from different aggregate economic shocks such as droughts, crop failure, famines, death of livestock, epidemics, floods, landslides, civil wars, and mass displacement, as well as rapid declines in major export commodity prices and it presents a compelling context in which to desire a better understanding of its history of recurring natural and economic shocks. The two covariate shocks, that is, economic and natural shocks are more likely to aggravate reductions in savings and in food consumption. In this study, we used young lives’ longitudinal data survey of UK project in Ethiopia. Fixed effect and random effect estimators in parallel with quantitative are used. This study adds to a limited literature and analyzes the effect of aggregate economic shocks on children’s health outcomes i.e. anthropometric measurements particularly, height-for-age and body mass index- for-age taken within the young cohort age group. The mean value of zhfa (zbfa) score of these YL children employed in this study was -1.59 (-1.39) respectively and 46.63% (46.53%) of these YL children were below this mean value and lie in the interval -8.50 (-9.90) and -1.323 (-1.536) zhfa (zbfa) of the normal curve respectively and 53.37% (53.47%) of these YL children were above this mean value and lay between -1.323 (-1.536) and 10.5 (5.50) zhfa (zbfa) of the normal curve respectively. The effect of crop failure on these young live children is estimated to be about 0.31cm (0.03 standard deviation) lower in height-for-age z-score, 7.51% of these children are severely stunted and 7.46% of these children are severely thinness. The impact of family-shocks on these YL children can be approximately; 0.39cm (0.03 standard deviation) higher in height-for-age z-score; 30.95% of these children were stunted and 0.03 standard deviation lower in body mass index-for-age z-score and 32.27% of these children were thin. In addition, these YL children affected by small shocks have probably about 0.28cm (0.01 standard deviation) lower in height-for-age z-score; 30.72% of these children were stunted and 28.12% of these children were thin and about 0.01 standard deviation higher in body mass index-for-age z-score; all of them have significant effect on child’s health outcomes. All of these aggregate economic shocks used in this study could not have the same effect on child health outcomes in its magnitude. Hence, our results highlight the importance of early understanding the problems of different aggregate economic shocks affect multiple child development domains during early period.
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Economic Shocks on Child Health Outcomes, 20 Sentinel Sites in Ethiopia