The Long-Term Effects of Unexpected Interruptions in Compulsory Schooling

In this paper we quantify the long-run impacts of childhood exposure to storms on education and labor market activities in urban and rural India. The identification strategy relies on an original continuous measure of exposure to storms during compulsory schooling that varies by birth-year cohort and district. Our results suggest that storms have substantial disruptive impacts on education and labor market prospects, causing a deskilling of the affected regions. The estimates are particularly sizable in the case of severe cyclonic storms which, because of climate change, have surged over the past few years. In this case, our findings imply an increase of 18 percentage points of the probability of accumulating an educational delay of at last one year, a 4.8 percentage points increase in the probability of no formal schooling and a fall of 8.1 percentage points in the probability of completing post-secondary education. In the long run, childhood exposure to storms has an impact on the type of labor market activity performed, causing a reduction in the probability of accessing regular salaried jobs while increasing the odds of performing domestic duties as primary activity.