We examine the relationships between climatic conditions, breastfeeding behavior, and maternal time use in Ethiopia. Infant feeding practices are important predictors of child nutrition that may be affected by a number of factors including mother’s time engaging in agricultural labor, food security, cultural beliefs, and antenatal care. We use panel data from the Living Standards Measurement Study to investigate linkages between climatic conditions during a child’s first year of life and year prior to birth and duration of exclusive breastfeeding. We then explore one potential mechanism: women’s agricultural labor. Results indicate that rainfall during the primary agricultural season—kiremt—in a child’s first year of life plays an important role in duration of exclusive breastfeeding. Experiencing 25 cm of average monthly kiremt rainfall, versus 5 cm, is associated with a 20-percentage-point decrease in the likelihood of being exclusively breastfed for the recommended 6 months. More kiremt rainfall is associated with a greater number of days that women spend planting and harvesting, and at high levels of rainfall women with infants do not engage in significantly fewer days of agricultural labor than those without infants. Lastly, we find that during the year before birth, greater rainfall during kiremt as well as the dry season is associated with a lower likelihood of 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding, potentially due to the early introduction of complementary foods. Our findings indicate that agricultural labor demands may in part drive breastfeeding behaviors, leading to “sub-optimal” feeding practices in the short-term, but resulting in improved household food security in the longer-term.

This paper examines the relationship between weather conditions and child nutrition in Ethiopia. We link data from four rounds of the Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey to high-resolution climate data to measure exposure to rainfall and temperature in utero and during early life. We then estimate a set of multivariate regression models to understand how weather conditions impact child stunting, an indicator of sustained early life undernutrition. We find that greater rainfall during the rainy seasons in early life is associated with greater height for age. In addition, higher temperatures in utero, particularly during the first and third trimesters, and more rainfall during the third trimester, are positively associated with severe stunting, though stunting decreases with temperature in early life. We find potential evidence for a number of pathways underlying the weather-child nutrition relationship including agricultural livelihoods, heat stress, infectious disease transmission, and women's time use during pregnancy. These findings illuminate the complex pathways through which climate change may influence child health and should motivate additional research focused on identifying the causal mechanisms underlying these links.