Climate Variability and Human Anthropometric Outcomes: Evidence from India

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Strategic Research Priority: Bioscience for HealthClimate variability is attributed to natural processes that lead to atmospheric alterations. These alterations can cause natural disasters, such as floods or prolonged droughts, which in turn may have numerous consequences for public health. While previous work has considered the health effects of extreme climate events, this Thesis focuses on the full range of variability in precipitation and temperature, as the exposure and human health outcomes, including attained or completed growth and nutritional status as primary outcomes among both children and adults (HAZ, WAZ and WHZ for children and height, weight and BMI for adult women). Under this framework and utilising a large Demographic and Health Survey dataset, the present study tested whether climate variability in India and more specifically in Uttar Pradesh, a large state that faces extreme fluctuations in weather patterns, is associated with short- and long-term effects on indicators of human health. The investigation involved exploring the effect of climate exposure at the time of birth in children, the propagation of this effect on adulthood and its inter-generational persistence, using Multiple Linear Regression analysis. Finally, the association of climate exposure at various times around birth with health outcomes was also explored. The outcomes of the analysis confirmed the hypotheses, indicating that the precipitation and temperature patterns in early life explain some of the variability in child HAZ, WAZ and WHZ, as well as in women's adult height, weight and BMI. This can be assumed in part to reflect differential exposure to ecological factors associated with precipitation and temperature that affect early growth rate. At the inter-generational level, the discovered signal was small and did not seem to denote any biological significance. The investigation of the effect of climate exposure at various early life timings indicated that around the time of weaning is when an individual is most vulnerable.