Climate Exposures and Household Dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa

Climatic variability has been linked to multiple demographic and health outcomes, but few studies have examined its impact on household size. Household size is an important correlate of wellbeing and is driven by multiple demographic processes that may be affected by environmental shocks. This paper describes these links conceptually, and then empirically examines the effects of exposure to climate anomalies on household size and three underlying components: fertility, marriage, and family agglomeration (partition). We examine these relationships by linking harmonized census microdata from eleven sub-Saharan African countries with high-resolution climate data from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and modeling the effects of recent temperature and precipitation exposures on the outcomes of interest. Our analyses find little evidence that recent temperature and precipitation exposures lead to overall changes in household size. When examining underlying demographic dynamics, however, we find that family agglomeration responds to both temperature and rainfall, marriage responds to rainfall and cold shocks, and higher temperatures are associated with increases in fertility. By studying these outcomes in one unified conceptual and empirical framework, our results suggest that many components of household size are associated with climate exposures, but in a manner that does not translate into significant net changes in household size.