Prenatal health and weather-related shocks under social safety net policy in Kenya

Exposure to weather shocks around the time of birth has been shown to have deleterious effects on later life outcomes. However, there are few studies examining the extent to which receiving a cash transfer can help buffer the effects of weather shocks experienced early in life, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this paper, we bridge this gap in the literature using a randomized control trial dataset from Hunger Safety Net Programme (HSNP) in Kenya. Our results show that about 16 percent of children were classified as being stunted and that exposure to drought (i.e., those experienced between 0-2 and 0-5 years) increases a child’s Height for Age Z (HAZ) scores by between 0.12 and 0.20 standard deviations, respectively, controlling for other covariates. Moreover, we show that a one standard deviation increase in drought exposure (i.e., those occurring between 0-2 years) reduces the probability of a child’s being stunted by approximately 6 percentage points for households in HSNP-treated compared to those in control households. We find evidence of buffering effect of social policy programs for HAZ scores only when drought is measured following Agnew’s classification. These effects are larger when participation is measured as an index than as a dummy: 52 versus 37 percentage points, respectively. Furthermore, by testing the fragile male hypothesis, our results suggest that adverse weather events are worse for male children, exacerbating the male-female differences in presence of weather shocks.