Long-term consequences of early-life exposure to Famine: Evidence from the 1943 Bengal Famine

While a large literature has examined the consequences of many major famines of the 20th century, almost nothing is known about the long-run health effects of the 1943 Bengal famine, which resulted in the death of an estimated three million people in Bengal. During the 1943 Bengal famine, while food was available in the rest of India, millions of people died in Bengal of starvation, primarily due to wartime policy restrictions by the British government. We use data from the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI) and difference in difference regressions to compare the health outcomes of people born in West Bengal before and after the 1943 famine to people born in other Indian states not exposed to the famine. Our estimates suggest that women exposed to the 1943 Bengal famine are approximately 3-4 cm shorter than those not exposed to the famine. The height deficit ranges from about 2.9 cm for those exposed in early childhood to around 4.2 cm for those exposed in utero. We also find that exposure to the famine increased the probability of being in fair or poor health by 17-19 percentage points among women and the probability of depression by 30-35 percentage points among men.