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Paper short abstract:

An empirical analysis based on panel household survey data from 2010-2019 on whether droughts and floods are associated with biases in investments in education households among boys and girls 5-18 years of age for Malawi.

Paper long abstract:

Severe droughts have increased in intensity and frequency in recent times and African nations are no exception, suffering particularly hard in the past decade. This paper looks at whether such droughts and floods are associated with biases in investments in schooling within households among boys and girls aged 5-18 years of age in Malawi. The data come from the longitudinal Integrated Household Panel Surveys for Malawi for 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2019. We also use an objective measure of relative dryness each child was exposed to, derived using data from the Climatology Lab’s TerraClimate product. Using a panel fixed effects model, the paper finds that school enrolment of boys aged 5-14 (the typical ages during which compulsory schooling is undertaken) are significantly positively affected by drought during the survey year, compared to girls. However, past droughts, experienced up to two years before the survey year have persistent negative effects on both school enrolment and education spending once enrolled of boys of this age group, compared to girls. Floods experienced during the year of the survey also have a significant negative effect on education spending on boys compared to girls. The empirical evidence for within household resource allocation during times of extreme weather is sparse and this paper makes an important contribution to this literature, arguing that extreme weather events can create new inequalities and biases in human capital accumulation.