Belgen and the Parental Purse: The Impact of the Karamoja Famine on Intra-Household Resource Allocations

Sammanfattning: Early-life health shocks can have very serious long-term consequences for those exposed to them, a fact which must be considered when parents make decisions with regards to allocating resources across their children. Here, the 1980 famine in Karamoja, Uganda is used as a natural experiment in which to test whether parental investment responses reinforce or compensate the impacts of early-life shocks. Through a novel implementation of the Latent Engel Curve Approach, evidence is uncovered that boys, those exposed at younger ages and those living in a male-headed household were all more likely to see reinforcement of the famine’s effects, whilst girls, older children and those living under a female head were more likely to see compensatory effects.