TY  - JOUR
AU  - Zivin,Joshua Graff
AU  - Damon,Maria
AU  - Thirumurthy,Harsha
TI  - Health Shocks and Natural Resource Management:  Evidence from Western Kenya
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 16594
PY  - 2010
Y2  - December 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16594
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16594.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Joshua S. Graff Zivin
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive, MC 0519
La Jolla, CA 92093-0519
Tel: 858/822-6438
E-Mail: jgraffzivin@ucsd.edu

Maria Damon
New York University
New York, NY  10012
E-Mail: maria.damon@nyu.edu

Harsha Thirumurthy
University of North Carolina-Chapel-Hill
E-Mail: harsha@unc.edu
AB  - Poverty and altered planning horizons brought on by the HIV/AIDS epidemic can change individual discount rates, altering incentives to conserve natural resources.  Using longitudinal data from household surveys in western Kenya, we estimate impacts of health status on labor productivity and discount rates.  We find that household size and composition are predictors of whether the effect on productivity dominates the discount rate effect, or vice-versa.  Since households with more and younger members are better able to reallocate labor to cope with productivity shocks, the discount rate impact dominates for these households and health improvements lead to greater levels of conservation.  In smaller families with less substitutable labor, the productivity impact dominates and health improvements lead to greater environmental degradation.
ER  -