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Sub-Saharan Africa will be experiencing more frequent extreme weather as a cause of climate change. Additionally, the region has the world’s highest child mortality rate with 92 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2013. However, no studies have examined how extreme weather shapes child mortality. We combine individual-level data from 83 Demographic and Health Surveys from 33 countries in sub-Saharan Africa with information on local rainfall and temperature and use the exogenous timing of weather events, namely droughts and heat waves, to develop a measure of shocks that is orthogonal to time-invariant determinants of mortality. We use fixed-effects models to identify the impact of both droughts and heat waves on child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. We also explore which are the pathways of influence explaining this effect between resistance to disease and exposure to disease, by examining the role of maternal education and community in mitigating it.

Climate change; Child mortality; Fixed-effects models; Sub-Saharan Africa