The fortune of birth at the right time: the long-term effects of the 2008 food and economic crisis on child health
Kornher, Lukas / Awudu Abdulai / Muhammed UsmanExterne Publikationen (2026)
in: Applied Economics, first published 07.04.2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2026.2652067
Open access
Conditions in early life have impacts on future health outcomes, educational attainments, and labour productivity. High international food and fuel prices triggered the 2007/08 global food crisis. Using the Demographic and Health Surveys and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys of 12 African countries, we analyse the medium- to long-term effects of the food price shocks of 2008 on the height for children aged 6–59 months. To compare children from different cohorts, we estimate country and sex-specific height reference curves based on earlier and later rounds of the DHS to
correct for the age-at-measurement bias of anthropometric z-scores. The results reveal a negative and statistically significant effect of in utero exposure to the global food crisis on child height, which increases at lower levels of nutritional status. The effect size varies across the study countries
and increases in a country’s share of cereals in food supply and decreases in a country’s per capita GDP. The coefficient estimate is negative and significant in 8 out of 12 countries. We do not find a systematic difference between agricultural and nonagricultural households. We also conduct
several robustness checks, including a difference-in-differences approach, based on several rounds of DHS.