The Effects of the 921 Taiwan Earthquake on the Labor Market Outcomes and on the Birth Outcomes
Date Issued
2014
Date
2014
Author(s)
Nian, Hui-Ci
Abstract
Here we focus on the negative impact of 921 earthquake in Taiwan. This dissertation is composed of 2 topics: one analyzes labor market and the other focuses on birth outcomes.
The magnitude 7.3 earthquake in September 1999 struck central Taiwan, injured more than two thousand people, and crippled GDP production. We wonder whether the labor market in Nantou and Taichung county have recovered in 2000-2111. In chapter 1, we use data collected in Manpower Utilization Survey data to estimate the changes of unemployment rate, working hour per week, and wage before and after the earthquake. Our estimates are based on differences-in-differences method, setting the labor data in Zhanghua and Yunlin county as our control group. Besides, we separately estimate the adverse effect on wages among workers in four major industries: agriculture, manufacture, entertainments and hotels. Our results suggests that wages decreased significantly in 2000-2001 for workers in Nantou and Taichung as a whole, but in 2001, the earthquake effect on wages became insignificant for workers in all four industries.
In the second topic, we explore the birth outcomes of pregnant women who underwent the earthquake in Taiwan. More and more literatures suggest that maternal stress during pregnancy has adverse effect on birth outcomes. However, sometimes the events that causes stress are endogenous, which disturb our estimation. Natural disasters are unpredictable, making them a good “natural experiment” to study the role of stress on the outcomes of neonatal health. In this chapter we identify the 921 earthquake as a source of stress and use differences-in-differences strategy to analyze 1994-2000 census birth certificate data. Our results suggest that stress is more harmful to fetuses under 28 weeks and embryos formed after 921 earthquake and before June 2000, which are carried by shocked mothers who underwent the earthquake. These birth outcomes show higher percentage of low birth weight, shorter gestation age, and premature labor.
Subjects
九二一地震
勞動市場
薪資
新生兒
出生健康
胚胎起源假說
Type
thesis
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-103-R01323011-1.pdf
Size
23.54 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):e9f5f73cdbe264e30313795666d5d3fd