Hunger, nutrition, and precipitation: Evidence from Ghana and Bangladesh

Cooper, Matthew; Brown, Molly E.; Azzarri, Carlo; and Meinzen-Dick, Ruth. 2019. Hunger, nutrition, and precipitation: Evidence from Ghana and Bangladesh. Population and Environment 41: 151-208. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-019-00323-8

Changing precipitation patterns caused by climate change are expected to have major impacts on food security and nutrition in agrarian areas in developing countries. However, the linkages between the duration and severity of precipitation shocks and their effects on child nutrition and household food security metrics remain underexplored. In this study, we used Feed the Future datasets from Ghana and Bangladesh to examine the impact of precipitation extremes on nutrition, measured by children’s height-for-age and weight-for-height Z-scores, and food security, measured by the Household Hunger Scale. We used a spatial error regression to control for the effects of spatial autocorrelation, and we found an association between precipitation shocks and household hunger in both Ghana and Bangladesh, as well as an association between higher rainfall and worse child nutrition in Ghana.