Jing Renzhi, Heft-Neal Sam, Wang Zetianyu, Chen Jie, Qiu Minghao, Opper Isaac M, Wagner Zachary, Bendavid Eran
Department of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.
Woods Institute for the Environment, Doerr School of Sustainability, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2025 May 6;122(18):e2413962122. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2413962122. Epub 2025 Apr 29.
Increasing educational attainment is one of the most important and effective strategies for health and economic improvements. The extent to which extreme climate events disrupt education, resulting in reduced educational attainment, remains understudied. Children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) may be uniquely vulnerable to losing schooling after disasters due to the poor physical condition of schools and the lack of resources to mitigate unexpected household shocks. Our analysis assesses this overlooked social cost of tropical cyclones on schooling attainment. We study the education records of nearly 5.4 million individuals living in 13 LMICs that experienced tropical cyclones between 1954 and 2010. By comparing individuals living in the same locations but with different exposure levels, we estimate the change in the likelihood that a preschool-age child exposed to tropical cyclone received no schooling. We find that exposure during preschool age is associated with a 0.5 percentage point increase in the likelihood of never attending schooling (2.5% above baseline), with larger effects (up to 8.8% increase) from stronger storms. These effects are more pronounced among girls and are greater in areas less adapted to tropical cyclones. Between 2000 and 2020, we estimate that 79,000 children in the 13 study countries did not start school due to tropical cyclones, and, across all affected students, tropical cyclones resulted in a total loss of 1.1 My of school. These impacts, identified among some of the world's poorest populations, may grow in importance as exposure to severe tropical cyclones is projected to increase with climate change.
提高教育水平是促进健康和经济改善的最重要、最有效的策略之一。极端气候事件扰乱教育并导致教育水平下降的程度仍未得到充分研究。由于学校的物质条件差以及缺乏应对意外家庭冲击的资源，低收入和中等收入国家（LMICs）的儿童在灾难后可能特别容易失学。我们的分析评估了热带气旋对学业成就造成的这一被忽视的社会成本。我们研究了生活在13个低收入和中等收入国家、在1954年至2010年间经历过热带气旋的近540万人的教育记录。通过比较生活在相同地点但暴露程度不同的个体，我们估计了学龄前儿童遭受热带气旋影响而未上学的可能性变化。我们发现，学龄前暴露于热带气旋会使从未上学的可能性增加0.5个百分点（比基线高出2.5%），更强的风暴影响更大（增加高达8.8%）。这些影响在女孩中更为明显，在对热带气旋适应能力较差的地区影响更大。在2000年至2020年期间，我们估计13个研究国家中有79000名儿童因热带气旋而未开始上学，在所有受影响的学生中，热带气旋导致总共损失110万个上学年。在世界上一些最贫困人群中发现的这些影响，可能会随着预计因气候变化导致严重热带气旋暴露增加而变得更加重要。
