Conflict, Climate, and Child Health: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Many parts of the world are experiencing widespread social and political instability, as well as ongoing climatic changes that are expected to worsen in the years and decades ahead. These changes can undermine child health and development through multiple pathways, and the increasing frequency of these shocks increases the likelihood that individuals are exposed to two or more stressors simultaneously. Empirical evidence about the potential impacts of such cooccurring shocks on children’s health has been limited to date, despite strong conceptual motivations for such analysis. We address this gap in the current study by measuring the independent and compounding effects of conflict and climate exposures on the weight-for-height (WHZ) of 0-23 month-old children across 33 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (n=188,558). To do so, we combine georeferenced records from the Demographic and Health Surveys, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, and the Climate Hazards Group Infrared Precipitation/Temperature dataset. We then fit regression models to measure the independent and interactive effects of conflict and climate exposures, to explore heterogeneity across social groups, and to assess the robustness of these main results to measurement and modeling decisions. The results indicate that heat independently undermines children’s health, but conflict exposures are only marginally associated with reductions in WHZ when averaged across the sample. However, conflict exposures are associated with substantively large and statistically significant reductions in WHZ when they occur in contexts experiencing unusually hot temperatures. These results may indicate that heat-stress-affected populations may be especially vulnerable to the health impacts of conflict. These impacts are also heterogeneous across social groups, and indicate that children born to less-educated mothers and in urban areas may be most vulnerable to conflict and climate exposures.