Persistence of Natural Disasters on Children's Health: Evidence from the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923

This study uses a catastrophic earthquake in 1923 to analyze the long-term effects of a one-off disaster on children's health. I find that fetal exposure to Japan's Great Kanto Earthquake had stunting effects on girls in the devastated area. Disaster relief spending helped remediate stunting among boys by late primary school ages, whereas it did not ameliorate girls' stunting, suggesting a biased remediation mechanism before birth and compensating investment after birth. While the maternal mental stress via strong vibrations played a role in the adverse health effects, the maternal nutritional stress via physical disruption also enhanced those effects

Pandemic Influenza and Gender Imbalance: Mortality Selection before Births

This study uses data from the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic in Japan along with newly digitized and complete census records on births, infant deaths, and sex ratios during childhood to analyze mortality selection in utero and its role in the gender imbalance. I find that fetal exposure to the influenza pandemic during the first trimester of the pregnancy decreases the proportion of males at birth. The results from mechanism analysis suggest that this decline in male births is associated with the deterioration of fetal and infant health. This result supports a wide range of existing literature on the long-run adverse effects of pandemic influenza. Analysis of population census data provide evidence suggesting that postnatal influenza exposure has long-term impacts on the gender imbalance among children, thereby implying potential disturbance in the future marriage and labor markets

Consumption smoothing in the working-class households of interwar Japan

I analyze Osaka factory worker households in the early 1920s, whether idiosyncratic income shocks were shared efficiently, and which consumption categories were robust to shocks. While the null hypothesis of full risk-sharing of total expenditures was rejected, factory workers maintained their households, in that they paid for essential expenditures (rent, utilities, and commutation) during economic hardship. Additionally, children's education expenditures were possibly robust to idiosyncratic income shocks. The results suggest that temporary income is statistically significantly increased if disposable income drops due to idiosyncratic shocks. Historical documents suggest microfinancial lending and saving institutions helped mitigate risk-based vulnerabilities