Climate change, rain fed maize productivity and rural malnutrition in Mexico

This paper estimates the impact of climate change on rain fed maize productivity and its association with rural child malnutrition in Mexico. We use panel data for 2,196 municipalities to assess the effects of temperature and rainfall on maize yields from 2003-07. We then incorporate scenarios of temperature and rainfall changes by 2030-2039 into the estimated coefficients to explore the effects of climate change. Our estimates suggest that climate change would modify maize yields per hectare by 2030-39 between -10.8 to +2.8% for autumn-winter and -15.2% to 48.8% for spring-summer on average (depending on the agricultural season, the municipality and the ensemble model used to project climate change scenarios). We then investigate whether such drops on maize yields are associated with increased child malnutrition in rural areas. Predicting the impacts of climate change on maize yields and then its association with stunting is a starting point to address the vulnerability of those who have low resilience to adverse extreme climatic events. We then investigate whether such drops in maize yields are associated with increased malnutrition of children in rural areas; on average, child malnutrition expressed as stunting (stunted children under 5 years old) appears to face limited reaction to climate change. The heterogeneous changes in maize production at the municipal level affect rural stunting changes from -4.73% to +1.59% by 2030-2039 relative to baseline stunting in 2005. Nevertheless, averages can be deceiving. The study indicates tremendous heterogeneity regionally. These estimates, however, may overstate the association of climate change with stunting in the sample since they only take into account spatial adaptive capacity. Households can adapt to changing climate conditions through spatial mobility, but also increased mean per capita output due to economic growth over the next 25 years