Impact of Extreme Climate Events on Educational Attainment: Evidence from Cross-Section Data and Welfare Projection

Abstract

This paper studies the impact of climate events on educational attainment. Instead of using multiple number of cross section or panel data sets, the educational attainment by age group in a single cross section data set is used to estimate the impact of historical climate shocks. The main empirical finding from Cameroon, Burkina Faso, and Mongolia data sets suggest that extreme climate events have long term negative impact on the educational attainment. In Cameroon, women who might have been affected by a drought are 8.7 percentage point less likely to complete primary school. In Burkina Faso, the drought reduced the probability for women to finish primary school by 1.9 percentage point, but the result is not statistically robust due to the low average in primary school completion. In Mongolia, the wild fire reduced the probability for individuals to complete secondary school by 14.4 percentage point. This paper also presents a benchmark figure of welfare loss caused by the climate events. In Mongolia, if there had been no wild fire in 1996, or if there had been a policy that protected households from the negative impact of the natural disaster, the average wage per worker, per year would have been 2.7% higher. JEL