Reallocating children's time: coping strategies after the 2010 Haiti earthquake

Rafael Novella and Claire Zanuso analyze the medium-term effect of the January 12, 2010 earthquake on household decisions about children's time. They use original survey data (the ECVMAS household survey, as cited in the text) together with a geological measure of ground motion assigned to each primary sampling unit. Separate measures of the earthquake's magnitude and its damage let them isolate the effect of the household's revealed vulnerability. The final sample is 3,833 children who were aged 10 to 17 in 2012 and lived in the same dwelling or community as at the time of the earthquake.

The results show that vulnerability at the time of the earthquake is associated with a lower chance of children only studying and a higher chance of working. In the fixed-effects models, higher vulnerability is associated with an 11 percentage point reduction in the probability of exclusively attending school and a 6 percentage point increase in the probability of working only. The authors conclude that social policies should focus on reducing household vulnerability, and note that the sample is limited to survivors, so the estimates are lower bounds.