Timing Matters: Estimating the Effects of Drought on School Attendance Across the Agricultural Cycle and School Year in Nigeria (WP-26-32)
Liliana Andriano, Julia Behrman, and Vineet Xie-Gupta
Demographers have long recognized that the timing of events matters for understanding population processes. Building on this insight, this study examines two often overlooked dimensions of timing in research linking drought shocks to children’s schooling in low-income agrarian contexts: exposure sensitivity, which arises when estimates differ across exposure windows within the agricultural calendar, and outcome sensitivity, which arises when estimates differ according to when schooling is measured relative to the shocks. The authors use panel data from Nigeria’s Living Standards Measurement Study–Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS‑ISA) linked to high‑resolution Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) data and exploit repeated interviews at the start and midpoint of the school year. The authors find that the effects of droughts on school attendance vary with both the exposure window and the point in the school year when attendance is measured: droughts in the pre-planting period reduce start-of-year attendance, whereas planting-season droughts reduce mid-year attendance. These findings contribute to a broader demographic literature on the importance of timing for making sense of population processes, while also showing that identifying when shocks disrupt schooling requires attention to both which exposure window is used and when school attendance is measured.