Influence of weather shocks and coping strategies on food consumption: Evidence from rural Niger

Weather is an important determinant of household well-being in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper explores the relationship between novel measures of cropping-season weather conditions and household food consumption in rural Niger, and how household coping mechanisms mediate that relationship. We employ a panel logit model to show that the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) and extreme heat degree day (EHDD) measures are associated with subjective self-reporting of drought in a panel dataset of 2 264 households. We then show, with a household fixed-effects panel model, that low NDVI and high EHDD measures are associated with significant decreases in household per capita food consumption. Household coping strategies, such as the disbursement of savings, temporary migration of a family member, and the adoption of heat-resistant agricultural technologies, are found to partially mitigate, but not fully alleviate, the negative effects of weather shocks on consumption. More comprehensive coping mechanisms are needed to improve household resilience to weather shocks.

Introduction: special issue on weather and climate impacts in developing countries

Shocks related to weather variations have strong effects on developing countries’ economies. Climate change is expected to increase the occurrence and magnitude of extreme weather events such as droughts, floods or hurricanes that strongly affect agriculture and other activities. This special issue gathers literature reviews and case studies that aim to better understand heterogeneous impacts and their transmission channels, as well as to evaluate the impact of such weather shocks on developing economies, including Sub-Saharan African countries, India and Brazil.

Communication Infrastructure and Stabilizing Food Prices: Evidence from the Telegraph Network in China

This paper exploits a unique historical setting—the expansion of the telegraph network in nineteenth-century China when railroads were limited—to examine whether the reduction of information frictions stabilizes grain prices. Employing a difference-in-difference (DID) strategy, we find that the telegraph access (i) reduced both the magnitude and the incidence of extreme prices; (ii) mitigated price responses to local weather shocks but increased the responsiveness to shocks in other telegraph-connected regions; (iii) affected the price volatility in a mean-reverting pattern; i.e., volatility rose in previously price-stable regions, and volatility decreased in price-unstable regions. (JEL D83, L96, N55, N75, O13, O18, Q11)

Special Issue on Climate Migration

How do weather shocks influence human mobility and poverty, and how will long-term climate change affect future migration over the course of the 21st century? These questions have gained unprecedented attention in public debates as global warming is already having severe impacts around the world, and prospects for the coming decades get worse. Low-latitude countries in general, and their agricultural areas in particular, have contributed the least to climate change but are the most adversely affected. The effect on people's voluntary and forced displacements is of major concern for both developed and developing countries. On 18 October 2019, Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) organized a workshop on Climate Migration with the aim of uncovering the mechanisms through which fast-onset variables (such as weather anomalies, storms, hurricanes, torrential rains, floods, landslides, etc.) and slow-onset variables (such as temperature trends, desertification, rising sea level, coastal erosion, etc.) influence both people's incentives to move and mobility constraints. This special issue gathers five papers prepared for this workshop, which shed light on (or predict) the effect of extreme weather shocks and long-term climate change on human mobility, and stress the implications for the development community.