Agenda

11 Nov 2024 12:15

Diogo Gerhard Castro de Britto (Università Milano Bicocca & Bocconi University)

Meeting Room 1, San Giobbe Economics Campus

 

Diogo Gerhard Castro de Britto (Università Milano Bicocca & Bocconi University) - Let the Water Do the Work: Climate Adaptation Policies and Economic Welfare (with Barreto, Carrillo, Da Mata, Emanuel, Sampaio)
 

Abstract:

Billions of individuals around the world experience water scarcity and changing climate conditions will likely exacerbate this issue. This paper studies the effectiveness of a scalable and low-cost climate adaptation technology improving access to safe water in rural areas. The policy distributed one million cisterns for water storage to poor families in one of the poorest Brazilian regions, historically plagued by severe droughts. Using a difference in differences design and unique individual level administrative data, we find that the cisterns remarkably increased beneficiaries’ economic welfare. Ten years after treatment, individual employment increased by 14% and reliance on cash transfers decreased by as much as 12%. These improvements can be explained by access to better jobs farther away from home – thanks to the sharp reductions caused by the cisterns in the daily time allocated to fetch water – and by substantial reductions in health issues associated with poor water quality. Our results provide evidence of the important role that climate adaptation policies can play in reducing poverty and promoting economic development.

 

Lingua

L'evento si terrà in inglese

Organizzatore

Department of Economics (EcSeminars)

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