Summary: Aimed at investigating the impact of natural disasters on learning of children and their future incomes, this paper focuses on the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. The study, conducted 4 years after the disaster, finds that children under three years of age at the time of the earthquake and living close to the fault line were significantly shorter than those living farther away. The test scores of children living within 20km from the fault line were 1.5 school grades lower than those living more than 20km away. However, children with mothers who had completed primary school were largely shielded from the earthquake’s negative effects on test scores.
Human Capital Accumulation and Disasters: Evidence from the Pakistan Earthquake of 2005
Jishnu Das
Tahir Andrabi
Benjamin Daniels
Citation: Andrabi, Tahir, Benjamin Daniels, and Jishnu Das. 2021. "Human Capital Accumulation and Disasters: Evidence from the Pakistan Earthquake of 2005." Journal of Human Resources 57 (2).
Previous studies show that experiencing disasters in childhood, especially in the first 3 years, negatively impacts learning outcomes, and therefore, productivity and earning levels in the future. However, this paper investigates these hypotheses when (i) shocks are accompanied by substantial compensation, and (ii) when parental attributes are taken into account.
The Pakistan Earthquake of 2005 was one of the most destructive earthquakes in history, destroying almost all of the infrastructure near the fault line, killing between 73,000 and 79,000 people, and injuring between 69,000–128,000 people. Andrabi and Das visited 126 villages in the impacted area in 2009 to record their unique characteristics and the development of children in these households. The households sampled in this study were all within 11.5 km of at least one fault line and half of them were within 2.5 km of one.
Study Design and Findings
Children closer to the fault line are shorter than those further away
To determine the shortfalls of physical and cognitive development of a child in response to the shock, the study uses height as an indicator, because no lags in weight were observed between those closer to the fault line and those further away, which could hint at nutritional deficiencies. In-utero children at the time of the earthquake who lived close to the fault line were found to be three centimeters shorter than those who lived farther away, and although this difference grows smaller and smaller with age, it does not disappear entirely unless they were three years or older at the time of the earthquake.
Given Bossaive et al.’s relationship between height and wages in Pakistan, the impact of the earthquake translates into 0.8% to 3% decrease in earnings for every centimeter. Literature usually supports the value of 2%, implying that on average, those closer to the fault line are likely to have 2% less income than those further away for every centimeter of differences in height.
Children closer to the fault line lost more learning than those further away
Even though post-earthquake school enrollment did not show a decline, and neither did gender enrollment rates worsen due to the disruptions caused by the natural disaster, there was the obvious problem of school closures. They averaged for a duration of 14-weeks but the resulting lags in learning were longer than that. At every age, those living closer to the fault line were doing worse in school after going back than those living further away. On average, children lost 1.5-2 years of learning due to the earthquake at all grade levels.
This was possibly exacerbated by the diverging learning trajectories when children returned to school after the earthquake, learning less and less each year after re-enrolling, due to the schools’ inability to allow a large number of students to repeat a grade or get everyone on the same page.
Learning outcomes of children whose mothers were somewhat educated differed significantly from those whose mothers did not
Children of mothers with at least primary level education were completely shielded from the effects of the earthquake, so that the entire burden was born by the children of mothers with no education. The earthquake increased the inequality between the two groups because “educated mothers were better able to handle school disruptions and compensate for a decline in the availability or quality of schooling inputs, rather than (for example) having the knowledge or resources to switch children into better or less affected schools after the earthquake.” (Andrabi, Das, 2021)
However, maternal influence can only mitigate learning losses, not biological shocks that demonstrate themselves in height differences.
Even though the response to the unpredicted natural disaster was heroic, especially from the government, the long-term impacts were not fully analyzed and human capital losses were not fully compensated. The large biological shocks, combined with learning losses, set the impacted children up for lower productivity and hence, income levels in the future as compared to their counterparts. It is important to alleviate these losses through targeted instruction programs and other efforts that could bridge the differences.
Study Resources
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As a condition of use, please cite as: Andrabi, Tahir, Benjamin Daniels, and Jishnu Das. 2021. "Human Capital Accumulation and Disasters: Evidence from the Pakistan Earthquake of 2005." Journal of Human Resources 57 (2).
Replication Files
Child height differences for those affected by the earthquake
Child test scores by age during the earthquake
Child test scores by age during earthquake, controlling for mother's education
Human Capital Accumulation and Disasters - Academic Presentation
Human Capital Accumulation and Disasters - Policy Presentation