Are Natural Disasters Disastrous for Education? Evidence from Seven Asian Countries

Abstract

We estimate natural-disaster impacts on children’s school enrollments and math skills and test for impact heterogeneities with respect to age and gender in seven countries in Asia and the Pacific, which is the world’s most disaster-prone region. We link survey data on children aged 5 to 17 to time- and geo-coded disaster variables. We create time-varying disaster exposures for each child for the first 1,000 days from conception, the most recent years, and the time in between. The results show significant negative effects of early life natural disaster exposures on enrollments and math skills; weaker or no effects of recent or mid-childhood disaster exposures; persistent negative effects of early life exposures on enrollments through school going ages; and variable age patterns of the enrollment and learning effects of exposures across countries. Boys’ enrollments were more negatively affected by early life natural disaster exposures, and girls’ math-test scores were more negatively affected by early life natural-disaster exposures.