Weather Shocks, Child Mortality, and Adaptation: Experimental Evidence from Uganda

Abstract

Climate change is increasing the intensity of extreme weather events. Health is a primary channel through which climate change affects welfare. Yet, estimates of the mitigating effects of health system strengthening are largely missing. We combine data from a randomized trial inducing variation in healthcare access with naturally-occurring variation in growing-season precipitation to study the adaptive impact of community healthcare in a low-income country setting. The risk of infant death increases following low growing-season rainfall, but access to community healthcare reduces this risk by 46 %. Using our estimates coupled with projections from climatological models implies even larger potential adaptive effects.