The impacts of adult deaths on the elderly in Tanzania

Type Journal Article
Title The impacts of adult deaths on the elderly in Tanzania
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2008
URL http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTGENDER/Resources/Beegle.pdf
Abstract
We contribute to the understanding of the impacts of HIV/AIDS-relatedmortality by analyzing the impacts of adult deaths on the labor supply and health outcomes of individuals above 50 years old in the Kagera region of Tanzania. We findthat the change in farm labor supply for these individuals shows no response to anadult death in the household in the last four years, but increases by about 4 hoursper week five to eight years after an adult death, and about 6 hours per week nineto thirteen years after an adult death. Labor supply for elderly women changes morein response to adult death than for elderly men. The labor increases are greater foradults who died between ages 15 and 29 compared to ages 30 to 50. We find evidence that livestock assets play a role in mitigating the increase in labor supply. Last, wefind that changes over time in health outcomes among these elderly are unaffected by adult death, while individuals with an adult death in the past four years actually experience a greater than average change in log food consumption. Our findings are robust to re-weighting to account for attrition bias and to the inclusion of a history of crop and illness shocks.

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