Timing Matters: Heterogeneous Effects of Climatic Events on School Attendance in Nigeria

Liliana Andriano , University of Southampton
Julia Behrman, Northwestern
Vineet Xie-Gupta, Northwestern University

This paper contributes to the literature on the population-level consequences of climate shocks by identifying two often-overlooked sources of temporal distortion in studies linking climate shocks to children’s schooling: (1) exposure misalignment, where climatic exposure windows ignore differences in household vulnerability across the agricultural calendar; and (2) outcome misalignment, when schooling is measured too early or too late relative to when the effects of shocks materialize or at points when school attendance varies across the academic year. Using Nigeria’s Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) linked to high-resolution SPEI, we show that substantive conclusions about the effect of climate shocks on school attendance in Nigeria depend on (1) whether shocks are measured in the preceding harvest season, preceding planting season, or period prior to the start of the school year; and (2) whether schooling was measured at the start or midpoint of the school year. These findings demonstrate how temporal distortion can obscure important seasonal dynamics in the relationship between climate shocks and children’s schooling, with implications for understanding how climate shocks influences human capital formation and broader demographic outcomes.

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 Presented in Session P80. Flash Session Environment, Human Capital and Inequalities