Conflict, Climate, and Child Health: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Many parts of the world are experiencing social and political instability, as well as ongoing climatic changes that are expected to accelerate in the years ahead. These changes can undermine children's health through multiple pathways, and the growing frequency of sociopolitical and environmental stressors increases the likelihood that individuals are exposed to multiple risks simultaneously. Few studies have quantified the effects of such concurrent shocks despite conceptual motivations for doing so. We address this gap by measuring the independent and compounding effects of conflict and climate exposures on the weight-for-height of 0–23 month-old children across 32 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. We fit regression models to measure the independent and interactive effects of conflict and climate exposures, to explore heterogeneity in effects, and to assess the robustness of our main findings. The results indicate that both conflict and heat undermine children's health, and the effects of conflict exposures are amplified when violence occurs in heat-stressed contexts. Impacts are heterogeneous across social groups: female children, children born to less-educated mothers, and residents of urban areas may be most vulnerable to conflict and heat exposures.