The Long-Term Impact of Natural Disasters on Human Capital : Evidence from the 1975 Zhumadian Flood
Abstract: What is the long-term impact of natural disasters on human capital? Most of the existing studies focused on the impacts of earthquakes and hurricanes and provided contradictory findings. This paper assesses the long-term impact of the Zhumadian flood on local human capital using the cohort difference-in-difference model based on large numbers of individuals. The results show that the Zhumadian flood reduces years of schooling for locals by 0.2 years. The transmission mechanism analysis shows that the flood led to the reduction of per capita grain holdings, which affected the population's access to education, and that the affected population tends to postpone marriage by 0.3 years on average in order to compensate for family losses. These findings confirm that due to the low capacity of China in the last century, disasters significantly reduce human capital as people have little access to government assistance. Thus, this study not only provides historical evidence of the huge impact of disasters in developing countries but also contributes to the understanding of the relationship between national capacity, disasters, and human capital
Year of publication: |
2022
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Authors: | ZHANG, zhenyu ; Zhang, Pan |
Publisher: |
[S.l.] : SSRN |
Saved in:
freely available
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