Early-life exposure to earthquakes and its long-term effects on human capital outcomes: The case of Myanmar

Abstract

This paper investigates the long-term effects of early-life exposure to natural disasters on a range of health and educational outcomes, utilizing the spatiotemporal variation in two large earthquakes that occurred in Myanmar in the same year as a natural experiment. The results indicate that cohorts exposed to earthquakes have a higher probability of having at least some difficulty with four activities: seeing, hearing, walking, and remembering. We adopt a battery of alternative specifications and arrive at similar results. Our further results show that earthquakes adversely impact the long-run educational attainment of individuals, exacerbating the pre-existing gender gap in schooling. The findings of this paper provide additional evidence of the importance of timely disaster management as one straightforward way to address the early-life roots of unequal opportunities.