Gender Norms Explain the Sex Differences in the Impact of Droughts on Child Wasting: The Case of Bangladesh

Chiara Puglisi , University of Bologna
Liliana Andriano, University of Southampton

This study contributes to the literature on the heterogeneous impacts of climate change on health by examining how meso-level dynamics influence individual vulnerabilities to climate shocks. Specifically, we investigate the impact of postnatal sex selection on child wasting following drought shocks in Bangladesh, which has recently been a?ected by droughts and has varying levels of son preference. We combine child-level data from the DHS with fine-grained data on drought. Our analysis examines (1) whether droughts impact children’s nutritional status, (2) whether this impact is larger for female children, and (3) whether this association depends on community-level son preference. Preliminary findings suggest a higher likelihood of wasting in drier regions, and that female children experience significantly larger nutritional deficits compared to male children. Importantly, we also find that this gender gap in the impact of droughts on undernutrition increases at increasingly higher levels of son-preference. Further analyses reveal that the observed increase in wasting probabilities for girls is exclusively observed for those who co-reside with a young male sibling, while boys remain unaffected regardless of sibling composition. We also find that, during drought periods, among children suffering from diarrhea, girls are less likely than boys to receive treatment. These findings suggest that discriminatory practices in both food and care allocation contribute to the observed nutritional inequalities following the climatic shock.

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 Presented in Session P123. Climate Stress, Gender Inequalities and Family Wellbeing