Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The devastating earthquake of April 25, 2015, and subsequent aftershocks took the lives of 8,891 people, while other 22,302 people had sustained injury. The quake resulted in full and partial damage of more than 800,000 individual homes of 14 fully affected and 17 partially affected districts of the country (MOF - Government of Nepal). In 2016, thirty-six percent of children in Nepal under age five were stunted, 10% were wasted, 27% were underweight, and 1% were overweight (MOH/Nepal, ERA/Nepal, and ICF 2017). These facts reflect the poor condition of the nutritional status of children in Nepal. They, therefore, raise the need for research so that the findings could help formulate policies in addressing the challenges in the human capital formation of Nepal. This paper study the impact of the earthquake on the nutritional status of children below the age of 5 years in the rural residence of Nepal. The reason behind focusing on the rural residence in our study is that 82.93% of the population lives in rural residences (Statistical Year Book 2017). These rural residents are at a disadvantage in terms of transportation & communication services, health facilities, financial services, aid programs, etc. The study does the subgroup analysis based on the gender of the children. Also, we analyze the impact of post-earthquake on the children of Brahmin/Chhetri and indigenous nationalities. Brahmin/Chhetri is the upper caste in the Hindu caste system. Brahmin/Chhetri have better representation in the state bureaucracy and national politics.

On the other hand, indigenous nationalities are the marginalized ethnicities in Nepal. Further, our study makes gender-based subgroup analysis within Brahmin/Chhetri and indigenous nationalities. This study uses Nepal DHS (Demographic and Health Survey) data. The DHS data for the years 2011 and 2016 makes it possible to analyze the effect of the earthquake on the nutritional status of children. We are using the difference-in-difference regression model. The earthquake negatively affected the nutritional status of the children below five years in a rural residence. It decreased the height-for-age Z-score (HAZ) by 0.335. In our subgroup analysis, the diff-in-diff coefficient for male children is not significant, whereas the coefficient for female children is -0.915. This finding suggests that female children were affected more than male children. Earthquake reduced HAZ by 0.787 for the children in indigenous nationalities. In Brahmin/Chhetri community, the result is insignificant.

The results for male children in both Brahmin/Chhetri and indigenous nationalities are insignificant. However, the result for female children is -1.557 for the Brahmin/Chhetri community and -1.222 for indigenous nationalities. These results tell us that in both ethnicities, female children suffered more than their male counterparts from the earthquake. Also, the female children in Brahmin/Chhetri were impacted more than the female children in indigenous nationalities.