Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Vellore Arthi
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of History
Author-Email: vellore.arthi@merton.ox.ac.uk
Title: The dust was long in settling: Human capital and the lasting impact of the american dust bowl
Abstract: I use variation in childhood exposure to the Dust Bowl, an environmental shock to health and 
income, as a natural experiment to explain variation in adult human capital. I find that the Dust Bowl 
produced significant adverse impacts in later life, especially when exposure was in utero, increasing 
rates of poverty and disability, and decreasing rates of fertility and college completion.  Dependence 
on agriculture exacerbates these effects, suggesting that the Dust Bowl was most damaging via the 
destruction of farming livelihoods.  This collapse of farm incomes, however, had the positive effect 
of reducing demand for child farm labor and thus decreasing the opportunity costs of secondary schooling,
as evidenced by increases in high school completion amongst the exposed.
X-Classification-JEL: 
Keywords: Dust Bowl, environmental shock, human capital formation, early life health
Length: 71 pages
Creation-Date: 2014-04-22
Number: _129
File-URL: http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/13332/vellore-arthi-dust-bowl.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:nuf:esohwp:_129