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The Impact of Parental Death on Child Well-being:
Evidence From the Indian Ocean Tsunami
Av a G a i l C a s &Elizabeth Frankenberg &
Wayan Suriastini &Duncan Thomas
#The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Identifying the impact of parental death on the well-being of children is
complicated because parental death is likely to be correlated with other, unobserved
factors that affect child well-being. Population-representative longitudinal data collected
in Aceh, Indonesia, before and after the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami are used to
identify the impact of parental deaths on the well-being of children aged 9–17 at the time
of the tsunami. Exploiting the unanticipated nature of parental death resulting from the
tsunami in combination with measuring well-being of the same children before and after
the tsunami, models that include child fixed effects are estimated to isolate the causal
effect of parental death. Comparisons are drawn between children who lost one or both
parents and children whose parents survived. Shorter-term impacts on school attendance
and time allocation one year after the tsunami are examined, as well as longer-term
impacts on education trajectories and marriage. Shorter- and longer-term impacts are
not the same. Five years after the tsunami, there are substantial deleterious impacts of the
tsunami on older boys and girls, whereas the effects on younger children are more muted.
Keywords Tsun am i .Orphans .Well-bein g .Family .Children
Introduction
On December 26, 2004, an earthquake measuring 9.3 on the Richter scale occurred off
the coast of Indonesia. The earthquake, which generated a 1, 200 km rupture in the
Demography
DOI 10.1007/s13524-014-0279-8
A. G. Cas
School of Business and Economics, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA
E. Frankenberg (*)
Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA
e-mail: e.frankenberg@duke.edu
W. Suriastini
SurveyMETER, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
D. Thomas
Department of Economics, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
Earth’s surface, spawned a tsunami that affected coastlines around the Indian Ocean.
Within 15 minutes of the earthquake, the tsunami reached the island of Sumatra and
engulfed communities along 800 km of the coastline of Aceh, the province closest to
the earthquake’s epicenter. The tsunami is estimated to have killed more than 160,000
people, with women, young children, and older adults the most likely to have died
(Doocy et al. 2007; Frankenberg et al. 2011;Rofietal.2006).
Many children lost one or both parents from the tsunami. We estimate that among
children aged 9–18 at the time of the tsunami, approximately 10,000 lost one parent,
and approximately 4,400 lost both parents. For these children, parental death was a
major unanticipated shock. This research measures the impact of that death on the well-
being of children in the aftermath of the tsunami. Establishing this impact is not
straightforward, even after an unanticipated shock, if a family in which a parent dies
differs from other families in ways that would have affected a child’s outcomes had the
parent survived. We directly address this concern by drawing on longitudinal data from
the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR), which we conducted in the
Indonesian provinces that were affected by the December 2004 Indian Ocean disaster.
The baseline survey was conducted 10 months before the tsunami and is representative
of the population living in districts with coastlines vulnerable to inundation.
Reinterviews took place annually between 2005 and 2010. The first post-tsunami
interview, approximately one year after the event, provides evidence on the short-
term impact of parental death. Evidence regarding the longer-term impact draws on
data collected approximately five years after the tsunami.
Although Indonesia regularly experiences earthquakes, tsunamis are rare, and the event
in 2004 was largely unanticipated. Moreover, the intensity of the tsunami varied within
small areas as a function of the topography, elevation, and orientation of the land relative
to the direction and force of the waves. Survival was largely attributable to idiosyncratic
factors revolving around the combination of where the waves hit and people’sprecise
locations at that moment. For these reasons, it is possible that parental death is independent
of prior behaviors, including previous investments in children. We show, however, that
parental survival is related to several characteristics of children measured in the pre-
tsunami baseline. Therefore, to identify the causal impact of parental death, we compare
changes in outcomes (measured before and after the tsunami) for children whose parents
died in the tsunami with the changes in those outcomes for children whose parents
survived. The combination of the longitudinal data on children who were living along
the coast of Aceh and the unanticipated nature of the tsunami provide a unique window on
how children’s well-being is affected by parental death.
The results of this investigation are important given that in recent years, high-
mortality natural disasters have caused surges in the number of orphaned children,
bringing media attention and humanitarian concern to their plight. Little scientific
evidence exists regarding the impact of parental death in these contexts on child
well-being. This research contributes to filling that gap.
Our evidence also speaks to a long-standing interest among demographers, sociol-
ogists, economists, and psychologists who have sought to understand how parental
absence affects children’s well-being. This interest has broadened as divorce, migration,
and the HIV/AIDS epidemic have increased the number of children experiencing the
absence or loss of a parent. Identification of causal effects in this literature has been a
substantial challenge.
A.G. Cas et al.
We examine indicators of child well-being related to human capital and time
allocation that are measured in the surveys collected both before and after the tsunami.
Parental death potentially affects other indicators of well-being, such as psychosocial
health and aspirations for the future, but because those measures are not available in the
baseline data, we do not examine those outcomes.
We find that the impact of parental death varies with the age and gender of the child
and that shorter-term impacts do not reliably portend what the longer-term impacts will
be. Little research has examined the impact of losing both parents. We find that the
death of both parents has a large, negative impact on the human capital accumulation of
15- to 17-year-olds of both genders, and likely of 9- to 14-year-old females. In addition,
loss of only a father has negative implications for older males, who acquire less
education after the tsunami than similar males whose parents survived the tsunami.
We find little evidence that parental death affects the human capital of 9- to 14-year-old
males. Maternal death has little impact on schooling outcomes of children but does
affect their time allocation.
Background
Aparent’s death typically ends a child’s relationship with someone of central emotional
importance, with the attendant potential for straining relationships with the remaining
parent or caregivers. Parental death usually worsens the family’seconomicstatus,
creates pressures to take on responsibilities of the dead parent, and may isolate the
child from friends (Stokes et al. 2009; Tremblay and Israel 1998; Worden and
Silverman 1996).
Parental absence is often accompanied by symptoms of poor psychosocial well-
being, with changes in behavior and school performance sometimes occurring.
However, the results of studies on how children fare after a parental death are not
uniform, which has motivated efforts to identify factors that mediate the impact of
parental loss (Sandler et al. 2003).
A key challenge in this literature is that parental loss is potentially correlated with
other unobserved factors that affect child well-being. Studies have contrasted impacts
of parental absence brought on by a death with absence because of divorce, arguing that
the death of a parent is plausibly exogenous with respect to other factors that affect
child welfare, whereas absence because of divorce is not. Using data from a British
cohort study, Fronstin et al. (2001) showed that parental absence when a child is 11–15
years old is associated with reduced educational attainment for males and females,
which is larger for males if the absence results from death rather than divorce.
Norwegian registry data indicate that paternal death lowers rates of transition from
lower to upper secondary school; similar effects emerge for divorce in models with
mother-specific random effects (Steele et al. 2009). However, it is unclear whether
random effects absorb all unobserved differences among children whose parents
divorce, those whose parent dies, and those who live with both parents. More generally,
although some parental deaths are likely to be random, it is unlikely that all are random
or that parental death can be treated as exogenous in these models.
In developing countries, much of the literature focuses on parental deaths from HIV/
AIDS. Early studies relied on cross-sectional Demographic and Health Surveys and
Impact of Parental Death on Child Well-being
reported that, controlling for age, school enrollment tended to be lower among children
whose parent had died prior to the survey, recognizing that the results may be driven by
unobserved heterogeneity (Bicego et al. 2003;Caseetal.2004).
Longitudinal data from Africa have been used to address concerns with unobserved
heterogeneity and investigate the dynamic impact of AIDS-induced parental death on
child outcomes. Using data from rural Kwa-Zulu/Natal, South Africa, Case and
Ardington (2006) reported that maternal death negatively affects subsequent enroll-
ment, school attainment, and education spending. The results are interpreted as causal
because future maternal death does not predict baseline school outcomes. In contrast,
paternal death has no effect on school outcomes; the authors suggested that effects of
paternal death, if they exist, may operate through socioeconomic status. Alternatively,
the authors suggested, paternal death may matter less than maternal death for children
in rural Kwa-Zulu/Natal because many of the fathers are absent: less than 30 % of
children coreside with the father, and approximately two-thirds coreside with the
mother.
Evans and Miguel (2007) compared changes in primary school participation of children
whose parents died between 1999 and 2002 in Kenya with changes for similar
children whose parents did not die. A child was approximately 5 % less likely to
be in school after the mother died. This effect appeared about two years prior to the
mother’s death, which the authors attributed to the influence of parental illness
resulting from HIV/AIDS, and persisted for several years after the death. Effects of
paternal death were smaller and not statistically significant.
In a study of longer-term impacts of orphanhood, Tanzanian children interviewed
between ages 7 and 15 years when both parents were alive were reinterviewed 10 years
later. Children who had lost a parent during the hiatus were compared with those whose
parents survived. Female orphans were more likely to be married (Beegle and
Krutikova 2008), orphans had completed one year less of schooling, and they were
2 cm shorter than non-orphans (Beegle et al. 2010). Because height is largely deter-
mined by the time a child is age 4 or 5 (Martorell and Habicht 1986), the differences in
height at follow-up likely reflect preexisting differences between children who subse-
quently lost a parent and those who did not. This underscores a methodological issue in
the literature on the impact of death from HIV/AIDS: because the parent is often ill for
several years prior to death, behavioral responses by children and their families may
precede the baseline measurement. Comparisons of trajectories of child well-being
before and after the death of the parent potentially reflect the combination of these prior
behaviors and the causal impact of the death itself. Longitudinal data alone may not be
sufficient to identify the causal effect of parental death; it is important that parental
death also be unanticipated.
This issue has been discussed in the literature. When a parent dies after a prolonged
illness, the child may be better prepared for the eventual loss (Worden and Silverman
1996). In a study of adolescents who lost a parent to HIV/AIDS, emotional distress and
contact with the juvenile justice system peaked in the year before the death and then
steadily declined (Rotheram-Borus et al. 2005). Results were similar for children who
lost a parent to cancer (Siegel et al. 1992,1996).
Investigators have argued that the causal effect of orphanhood can be identified
when parental death is accidental. Using Indonesian data in which some deaths may be
unanticipated, Gertler et al. (2004) reported that recent parental death is associated with
A.G. Cas et al.
reduced school enrollment among children and that older daughters with younger
siblings are at higher risk of dropping out of school when a parent dies. Chen et al.
(2009), drawing on administrative records from Taiwan, examined the relationship
between parental deaths from accidents and college enrollment. They found that the
unexpected death of a mother results in a 4 % lower probability of enrolling in college
for children at least 18 years of age when a parent died than for younger siblings; death
of a father does not affect college enrollment. The authors interpreted these patterns as
evidence that maternal provision of nonfinancial support is more important for college-
going behavior than paternal financial support, which can be replaced with resources
provided to families after the father’s death. Whereas some accidents can legitimately
be treated as exogenous in these models, the concern remains that parents who are more
likely to have accidents differ from other parents in unobserved ways that are related to
investments in children.
Our research makes four contributions to the literature. First, we identify the effect of
orphanhood based on the combination of (1) unexpected parental deaths that occurred
because of the tsunami and (2) longitudinal data collected before and after the tsunami.
The estimated effects are purged of contamination from unobserved heterogeneity that is
fixed at the child and family level. From a methodological point of view, the combina-
tion of both dimensions of the research design are important to measure the impact of
parental death on child well-being, at least in the context of the Indian Ocean tsunami,
which underlies our second contribution: much-needed information on the well-being of
children orphaned in a large-scale natural disaster. Third, we examine both shorter- and
longer-term impacts of parental death on child outcomes and find that shorter-term
impacts are poor predictors of longer-term impacts. Fourth, we distinguish male from
female children, older from younger children, and the loss of a mother from the loss of a
father from the loss of both parents. We establish that all these distinctions are important
for understanding the impact of parental death on the well-being of the next generation.
Aceh and the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami
Aceh, located at the northern tip of Sumatra, lies at the periphery of the Indonesian
archipelago, which, along with historical factors, contributed to a desire for autonomy
that has set the province apart from provinces closer to Jakarta. The exploitation of
Aceh’s abundant natural resources, particularly oil and natural gas at the beginning of
the 1970s, fuelled aggregate economic growth in the province and sustained high rates
of growth in Indonesia more broadly for three decades until the 1998 financial crisis.
The distribution of the benefits caused conflicts between the Acehnese and the central
government, which, in combination with disagreements over the application of Islamic
law, underlay the formation of the separatist movement GAM (Free Aceh Movement).
GAM was disbanded in the year after the tsunami (Rist 2010).
Despite its natural resources, the material well-being of the population of Aceh is
close to the average for all Indonesians. At the time of the tsunami, the poverty rate in
Aceh was slightly higher than the average for all of Indonesia, and more Acehnese fell
into poverty as a result of the destruction caused by the tsunami. However, within a few
years, the poverty rate had returned to its pre-tsunami level, in part because of the
massive reconstruction effort (Thorburn 2009; World Bank 2009).
Impact of Parental Death on Child Well-being
The Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of 2004 resulted in a 1,200 km rupture along the
floor of the Indian Ocean. The displaced water generated a tsunami that slammed into
the island of Sumatra shortly after the earthquake (Lay et al. 2005;Marris2005),
causing more than 160,000 deaths and massive destruction.
Two features of the tsunami are important for our empirical approach. First, the
tsunami was not expected. No early warning systems were in place. Moreover,
geological evidence documents that mainland Sumatra had not experienced a tsunami
for more than 600 years. Second, the severity of the impact varied in ways that could
not be anticipated even within small areas. Areas where the water hit full force
experienced the greatest damage, but sites nearby were protected from the water’s
force by topographical features of the coastline (Frankenberg et al. 2011). Because
idiosyncratic features of the landscape played an important role in determining risk,
parental deaths from the tsunami are driven less by genetic risk factors, prior behavioral
choices, and socioeconomic status than is the case for parental absence caused by death
from illness, floods, hurricanes, or other natural hazards.
Data
The Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR) is a longitudinal survey of
individuals who, prior to the tsunami, were living in the provinces of Aceh and
neighboring North Sumatra. The baseline survey, STAR0, was conducted in February
2004 as part of the annual population-representative cross-sectional socioeconomic
survey SUSENAS, conducted by Statistics Indonesia.
With the assistance of Statistics Indonesia, we fielded the first follow-up wave,
STAR1, between May 2005 and July 2006. We targeted all SUSENAS respondents
from the 2004 survey who were living in any of 11 kabupaten (districts) in Aceh and 2
kabupaten in North Sumatra. The baseline sample survey includes 407 enumeration
areas in 367 villages. The kabupaten were selected because they each have a coastline
and so were, in principle, vulnerable to inundation from the tsunami waves. Tsunami
effects varied within and across these kabupaten because the force and reach of the
water varied considerably as a function of land topography.
In the baseline survey, informants reported the socioeconomic and demographic
characteristics of themselves and other household members. In STAR1, we collected
individual-level and household-level data, drawing on and augmenting the baseline
questionnaire. In addition, village leaders and informants at local schools and health
facilities provided information as part of a large community-level survey.
STAR1 was the first of five annual post-tsunami surveys. We also use data from the
fifth follow-up, STAR5, which took place between November 2009 and November 2010.
We focus on children and young adults aged 9–17 at the time of the baseline survey
who were living in 91 communities along the coast that sustained heavy damage from
the tsunami, as measured by a combination of satellite imagery, direct observations of
survey supervisors, and interviews with village leaders. In the larger STAR sample, the
vast majority of deaths resulting from the tsunami occurred in these areas. In STAR1,
and subsequently, we put considerable effort into both identifying which baseline
respondents died and locating the survivors. When respondents could not be found in
the baseline location, interviewers obtained proxy information about their whereabouts
A.G. Cas et al.
and tracked them to their new location. In approximately one-half of these cases,
survivors had moved to temporary camps; the majority of the others had moved to
the homes of family or friends or rented housing elsewhere. One or more family
members provided information about the survival status of each member of the baseline
household. If no family member could be found, we drew on information collected
from neighbors, village leaders, and local death registers compiled after the tsunami. Of
1,173 age-eligible children in the baseline, 345 (30 %) are known to have died. Of the
remaining 828 children, we interviewed 709 (86 %) in the first follow-up. Persistent
attempts to track all survivors in subsequent waves paid off: we found more survivors,
and 737 (89 %) were assessed in the final interview.
1
Approximately one in six of the children interviewed in the first follow-up had lost
at least one parent, as shown in panel A of Table 1. The literature suggests that the
loss of a mother has a larger impact on child human capital outcomes than the loss of
a father. In our empirical models, we will distinguish the loss a mother from the loss
of a father, as well as the loss of both parents. In our study sample of children, 7.9 %
lost a mother, 4.5 % lost a father, and 4.4 % lost both parents to the tsunami.
We examine five shorter-term child outcomes and five longer-term outcomes, all of
which are related to human capital and time allocation. The shorter-term outcomes were
measured at the first follow-up interview approximately one year after the tsunami,
when the children were aged 10–18. At that time, 83 % were enrolled in school, 9 %
had worked in the previous week, and 36 % had helped with housekeeping in the
previous week (panel B of Table 1). A scholarship program was instituted by a number
of different humanitarian aid organizations across Aceh to encourage children to stay in
school. As with much of the humanitarian response to the tsunami, the structure of the
scholarships varied across programs. The modal scholarship covered all fees, costs of
books, and costs of exams for either one or two years. For example, among children of
elementary and high school age, the scholarship funded by Education International
paid, on a monthly basis, approximately 10 million Indonesian Rupiah (Rp) per year
(approximately $100US). Other donors included the Putera Sampoerna Foundation, the
Freeman Foundation, and the Organization of Islamic Conference. Many programs
describe their primary targets as those children who had lost one or both parents and
children whose parents lost their livelihood because of the tsunami. Approximately 19 %
of the children in our sample had received a scholarship after the tsunami.
By the time of the final interview, about five years later, less than two-thirds of the
children were enrolled in school, and the average child had completed 10.2 years of
schooling. Approximately 28 % were working in the labor market (for a wage, in a
family business, or self-employed), 39 % did housework in the week prior to the
survey, and 11 % had married.
Empirical Strategy
Our goal is to identify the extent to which variation in these child human capital–related
outcomes can be attributed to the death of a parent in the tsunami. A natural starting
1
One percent of the children refused to participate in each wave, two children died between the first and final
resurvey, and the remaining children were lost to follow-up.
Impact of Parental Death on Child Well-being
place is to estimate the relationship between each of the shorter-term and longer-term
outcomes, Y
it
, for child iat time t(where tspans the period before and after the
tsunami), and parental death, D
it
, controlling time-varying and time-invariant child
and family characteristics, X
it
and X
i
,respectively:
ð1Þ
Parental death, D, is vector-valued, distinguishing children who lost their mother, those
who lost their father, and those who lost both parents in the tsunami. An important
advantage of our research is that parental death does not reflect prior health-related
behaviors but is the consequence of a large and unexpected natural disaster. Estimates
from Eq. (1) can be interpreted as causal if parental death in the tsunami is exogenous
in the model: that is, if unobserved heterogeneity it
εis not correlated with covariates in
the model including parental death. This strong assumption underlies much of the
existing literature. In our context, it is reasonable to suppose that parents who survived
the tsunami are stronger or better swimmers than other parents, or that they lived in
Ta b l e 1 Parental death, shorter-term and longer-term child outcomes
A. Parental Death as a Result of the Tsunami
% of children who lost one or both parents 16.8
% of children whose
Mother died 7.9
Father died 4.5
Mother and father both died 4.4
B. Child Outcomes
B.1 Shorter-term outcomes (at first follow-up interview)
% of children
Enrolled in school at time of follow-up interview 83.2
Received scholarship
a
19.2
Working in market sector in week before interview 9.2
Housekeeping in week before interview 35.7
Sample size 709
B.2 Longer-term outcomes (at final follow-up interview)
Completed years of education 10.2
% of children
Enrolled in school at time of interview 62.1
Working in market sector in week before interview 28.2
Housekeeping in week before interview 38.5
Ever married by time of interview 11.1
Sample size 737
Notes: The sample consists of tsunami survivors who, at the baseline interview, wereaged 9–17 and living in a
community that was subsequently heavily damaged by the tsunami. Shorter-term outcomes were measured
during first post-tsunami interview, approximately one year after tsunami. Longer-term outcomes were
measured in final interview, approximately five years after the tsunami.
a
Between time of tsunami and first follow-up interview.
A.G. Cas et al.
more robust houses. If those parents also invested more in the human capital of their
children prior to the tsunami, then the assumption that it
εis unrelated to parental death
will be violated.
If such differences exist and reflect traits that do not change during the study period,
they can be taken into account in Eq. (1) by including a child-specific fixed effect.
Specifically, separating unobserved heterogeneity into two components—a fixed effect
that is time-invariant for each child ( i) and a component that varies over time (
i
t
), we
rewrite Eq. (1)as
Y
it Dit Xit i it .
ω
μ
γ
β
α
=++++ ð2Þ
The fixed effect absorbs all characteristics of the parent and child that do not change
over time and affect the outcome, Y
it
, in a linear and additive way. These include
observed characteristics, X
i
, in model (1) along with unobserved characteristics that are
included in it
εin that model. The latter might include, for example, parents’tastes for
investments in their children; characteristics of the child, such as ability and ambition;
and characteristics of the family and community in which they were living at the time
of the tsunami.
Estimates of Eq. (2) require repeated observations of the same child before and after
the tsunami. We examine indicators of schooling and time allocation that were mea-
sured for the same child before the tsunami and again after the tsunami.
One indicator was collected only after the tsunami. In the first resurvey, we asked
about participation in programs implemented after the tsunami to assist families,
including whether the child received a scholarship from such a program. Because this
scholarship program did not exist at baseline, we assume that no child received one of
these scholarships at that time.
Before presenting our empirical results, we assess whether parental death can be
treated as exogenous in model (2). Indicators measured in the pre-tsunami baseline for
children whose parents subsequently survived the tsunami are compared with indicators
for children who lost one or both parents in the tsunami.
The first row of Table 2shows that, on average, children whose parents survived the
tsunami were 12.9 years old at baseline (column 1), whereas children who lost any
parent were age 13.5 (column 2); this 0.6-year difference is significant (column 3). The
differences for children who lost their mother, their father, or both parents relative to
those whose parents survived are displayed in columns 4, 5, and 6, respectively; none
of these differences are significant.
The second row of the table indicates that males constitute a significantly higher
fraction of survivors among children who lost parents relative to children whose parents
survived. The difference is largest for children who lost both parents; in this group, 19.9 %
more young males survived than young females, and this difference is also
significant.
Children whose parents died in the tsunami were also significantly better educated
and significantly more likely to be enrolled in school prior to the tsunami. They were less
likely to be working or engaged in housekeeping in the week before the pre-tsunami
survey relative to those whose parents survived, although these differences are not
significant. The rest of Table 2compares characteristics of parents and households of
those children whose parents survived the tsunami relative to those whose parents did
Impact of Parental Death on Child Well-being
not survive. None of these differences are statistically significant. We also estimate
models that include a community fixed effect, which compares children within each
community. In these models, we find no statistically significant differences in any of the
indicators in the table between children who lost one or more parents and those who did
not. Thus, part of the differences between orphans and non-orphans can be attributed to
differences across study sites, including the likelihood of death of parents. For some
outcomes, differences between children who were orphaned and those who were not are
similar in magnitude in models with and without community fixed effects, suggesting
Ta b l e 2 Child and family characteristics at pre-tsunami baseline stratified by survival status of parents
Both Parents One or Both
Difference (relative to both parents
survived)
Survived Parents Died Any Parent Mother Father Both Parents
Tsunami During Tsunami Died Died Died Died
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Age (years) 12.9 13.5 0.6 0.6 0.2 0.8
(0.1) (0.2) (0.3) (0.4) (0.5) (0.4)
Male (%) 54.2 65.5 11.3 8.2 8.2 19.9
(2.1) (4.7) (5.1) (8.3) (9.1) (8.8)
Education (years) 5.3 6.4 1.1 1.1 0.9 1.5
(0.2) (0.2) (0.3) (0.4) (0.6) (0.5)
Enrolled in School (%) 91.4 96.6 5.3 5.0 5.5 5.4
(1.5) (1.5) (2.2) (2.8) (3.5) (3.6)
Working for a Wage (%) 4.6 2.8 –1.8 –2.7 3.1 –4.6
(1.6) (1.5) (2.2) (2.5) (5.5) (1.6)
Engaged in Housekeeping (%) 8.2 3.8 –4.4 –4.3 –8.2 –1.3
(1.8) (2.9) (3.4) (4.2) (1.8) (5.1)
Mother’s Education (years) 8.5 8.6 0.1 0.5 –0.8 0.3
(0.4) (0.4) (0.5) (0.8) (0.8) (0.6)
Father’s Education (years) 9.4 9.0 –0.4 –0.5 –0.9 0.3
(0.4) (0.4) (0.5) (0.7) (0.8) (0.7)
Mother Alive at Baseline (%) 98.1 99.2 1.0 1.9 –1.3 1.9
(0.7) (0.9) (1.0) (0.7) (3.2) (0.7)
Father Alive at Baseline (%) 95.4 90.8 –4.7 –0.8 –4.8 –11.6
(1.0) (4.0) (4.0) (5.3) (9.0) (7.3)
Per Capita Expenditure 40.0 41.8 1.8 7.9 –10.1 3.1
(Rp 10,000 per month)
a
(2.7) (5.7) (5.9) (11.0) (3.7) (5.6)
Household Size 5.9 5.8 –0.1 0.0 –0.1 –0.5
(0.2) (0.2) (0.2) (0.3) (0.4) (0.3)
Notes: In the first post-tsunami survey, 590 children were interviewed whose parents both survived (column
1), and 119 children were interviewed who lost one or both parents (column 2). Column 3 is the difference
between columns 2 and 1. Standard errors, shown in parentheses, are adjusted for clustering at the community
level and take into account heteroskedasticity.
a
Rp 10,000 is approximately equal to $1US.
A.G. Cas et al.
the possibility that even within communities, preexisting differences may exist between
children who were orphaned by the tsunami and children who were not orphaned.
Results in Table 2establish that children who lost parents in the tsunami had higher
levels of human capital before the tsunami than children whose parents survived the
tsunami. To the extent that these pre-tsunami differences are not absorbed by observed
characteristics in the model (in Eq. (1)), unobserved heterogeneity in the model will be
correlated with parental death and estimates will be biased. If, however, these pre-
tsunami differences reflect influences that are fixed for a child over the study period,
they will be absorbed in the child fixed effect, and estimates in Eq. (2) can be given a
causal interpretation. The results in Table 2underscore the critical importance of having
a pre-tsunami baseline in order to identify the causal effect of parental death on child
outcomes.
We have established that males are more likely to have survived the tsunami than
females. The male survival advantage also holds for adults, which has been attributed to
the fact that males are stronger and, in Islamic Aceh, much more likely to know how to
swim than females (Frankenberg et al. 2011). We estimate separate models for males
and females.
We also explore whether other attributes are associated with children’ssurvival
status (Table 5in the Appendix). The only significant difference is that children who
helped with housekeeping were also more likely to survive. This difference, however, is
small in magnitude and is both smaller in magnitude and not significant when com-
parisons are drawn within communities. The evidence indicates that net of age and sex,
children’s deaths are not significantly related to pre-tsunami own human capital,
parental human capital, or household resources.
The final three columns of Table 5compare the same indicators for respondents who
were interviewed in the first follow-up with those who were not. None of the differ-
ences are significant; and, taken together, the indicators explain only 1.2 % of the
variation in the probability that an individual was not interviewed in the follow-
up survey (Fstatistic for the significance of all the covariates in Table 5=1.2;
pvalue = .31). In short, we find no evidence that attrition is selected on
observed characteristics measured at baseline.
Results
The empirical model (shown in Eq. (2)) is estimated by ordinary least squares
(OLS) regression including child fixed effects. All estimates of variance-
covariance matrices take into account clustering at the community level and
are robust to arbitrary forms of heteroskedasticity. Results for older children
(ages 15–17 years at baseline) are reported in Table 3. Results for younger
children (ages 9–14 years at baseline) are reported in Table 4. All models are
stratified by the child’s gender, and we distinguish short-term outcomes (mea-
sured one year after the tsunami) from longer-term outcomes (measured ap-
proximately five years after the tsunami). Each panel of the table reports the
impact on the outcome listed in the first column of the table of death of the
mother, death of the father, and death of both parents relative to the excluded
group (both parents survived the tsunami).
Impact of Parental Death on Child Well-being
Ta b l e 3 Effects of death of a parent on outcomes for children ages 15–17 at baseline: Post-tsunami outcomes
versus pre-tsunami outcomes for children who lost one or both parents compared with children whose parents
survived the tsunami
Older Males Older Females
Short-Term Long-Term Short-Term Long-Term
Child Outcome Status of Parent (1) (2) (3) (4)
% Enrolled in School Mother died/father alive –11.6 7.0 –22.2 –0.1
(18.0) (15.2) (17.4) (21.1)
Father died/mother alive –37.7 –24.7 14.5 11.8
(18.6) (16.5) (4.9) (29.4)
Both mother and father died –9.2 –40.2 –15.9 –55.3
(14.7) (10.6) (28.7) (4.5)
% Received Scholarship Mother died/father alive –13.3 10.2
(7.3) (9. 2)
Father died/mother alive 0.6 19.3
(15.4) (26.8)
Both mother and father died –21.8 –16.9
(4.3) (4. 3)
Years of Education Mother died/father alive –0.9 0.9
(completed) (0.6) (1.1)
Father died/mother alive –1.3 –0.1
(0.9) (0.5)
Both mother and father died –1.7 0.0
(0.4) (0.7)
% Working Mother died/father alive 12.8 –10.1 8.1 7.5
(previous week) (13.5) (13.6) (11.3) (21.0)
Father died/mother alive 2.0 3.7 –37.5 –26.3
(11.7) (17.8) (28.0) (48.1)
Both mother and father died 27.1 34.2 –5.0 –26.0
(16.2) (14.3) (3.0) (4.9)
% Doing Housework Mother died/father alive 15.0 0.8 34.0 15.3
(previous week) (21.9) (7.6) (12.8) (3.8)
Father died/mother alive 18.9 7.8 –39.0 15.5
(13.6) (2.8) (8.5) (4.0)
Both mother and father died –5.5 7.7 53.2 16.0
(10.8) (2.8) (6.5) (3.8)
% Ever Married Mother died/father alive –0.1 6.7
(7.7) (20.5)
Father died/mother alive –7.3 –5.1
(2.9) (27.3)
Both mother and father died –7.2 62.0
(2.8) (5.6)
Number of Children 181 185 151 159
Notes: The excluded category in each regression is both parents survived the tsunami. Short-term models
compare pre-tsunami outcomes with outcomes one year after the tsunami. Long-term models compare pre-
tsunami outcomes with outcomes five years after the tsunami. There are two observations for each child. All
models control age of child and include child fixed effects. Standard errors, shown in parentheses, take into
account clustering at the community level and heteroskedasticity of arbitrary form.
A.G. Cas et al.
We begin with older children, who are likely to make the transition from school to
work and possibly family formation during the study period. The shorter-term impacts
Ta b l e 4 Effects of death of a parent on outcomes for children ages 9–14 at baseline: Regression estimates
comparing post-tsunami outcomes with pre-tsunami outcomes
Younger Males Younger Females
Short-Term Long-Term Short-Term Long-Term
Child Outcome Status of Parent (1) (2) (3) (4)
% Enrolled in School Mother died/father alive 2.5 –13.0 7.5 9.0
(2.2) (13.5) (3.4) (8.3)
Father died/mother alive 2.8 –2.1 –4.1 –26.9
(2.5) (22.9) (11.1) (21.8)
Both mother and father died 2.8 –13.6 6.3 –50.8
(2.5) (12.4) (2.8) (16.7)
% Received Scholarship Mother died/father alive 3.2 6.7
(8.3) (14.7)
Father died/mother alive 32.0 22.2
(19.7) (13.2)
Both mother and father died 32.0 40.0
(11.9) (24.9)
Years of Education Mother died/father alive –0.2 0.4
(completed) (0.3) (0.5)
Father died/mother alive –1.4 1.1
(1.1) (0.9)
Both mother and father died –0.1 0.1
(0.7) (0.4)
% Working Mother died/father alive 0.0 2.6 –2.4 –9.9
(previous week) (5.4) (12.3) (1.6) (4.8)
Father died/mother alive 7.1 26.7 8.9 –9.8
(12.2) (25.9) (9.6) (4.8)
Both mother and father died –5.4 22.3 –2.0 23.6
(2.2) (16.1) (1.4) (21.6)
% Doing Housework Mother died/father alive 12.6 2.6 –1.1 0.5
(previous week) (10.5) (1.2) (17.0) (7.5)
Father died/mother alive –12.7 2.3 15.0 7.8
(3.6) (1.3) (21.2) (2.6)
Both mother and father died –21.0 –6.3 –26.5 –8.8
(9.0) (9.0) (30.3) (16.2)
Number of Children 217 223 160 170
Notes: The excluded category in each regression is both parents survived the tsunami. Short-term models
compare pre-tsunami outcomes with outcomes one year after the tsunami. Long-term models compare pre-
tsunami outcomes with outcomes five years after the tsunami. There are two observations for each child. All
models control age of child and include child fixed effects. Standard errors, shown in parentheses, take into
account clustering at the community level and heteroskedasticity of arbitrary form.
Impact of Parental Death on Child Well-being
of parental death are reported in the first column of Table 3for older males. One year
after the tsunami, they were less likely to be enrolled in school if a parent died—an
impact that is large and statistically significant if the father died. There is no evidence
that the scholarship programs introduced after the tsunami were effectively targeted at
older children who were orphaned by the tsunami. In fact, the least likely to receive a
scholarship were older males who lost both parents in the tsunami.
Five years after the tsunami (column 2 of Table 3), relative to those who did
not lose a parent, the older male children who lost both parents had completed 1.7
years less schooling since the tsunami, and they were 40 percentage points less
likely to be enrolled in school and 34 percentage points more likely to be working.
These effects are both substantively large and statistically significant. Relative to
those whose parents both survived, older males whose father died had completed
1.3 fewer years of schooling since the tsunami, and they were less likely to be
enrolled in school. (These gaps are not statistically significant.) Both double
orphans and those who lost a father were 7 percentage points less likely to be
married five years after the tsunami. None of the differences between the double
orphans and those who lost their father are statistically significant. The results
indicate that losing a father or losing both parents has taken a toll on the trajectory
of human capital accumulation of older male children as they have shifted out of
school and into work earlier than similar males who did not lose a parent.
2
An
examination of household rosters in the post-tsunami surveys establishes that in
many cases, males who lost their father or both parents have taken on the role of
the head of the new household, including taking care of their younger siblings. We
conclude that these older male orphans are likely to carry the costs of the tsunami
into adulthood and possibly through the rest of their lives.
Results for older female children are reported in the third and fourth columns of
Tab le 3. In the shorter term, death of a father results in higher rates of school enrollment
and lower rates of doing housework. However, death of the mother or both parents
resulted in lower school enrollment (albeit not significantly) and substantially higher
rates of doing housework (34 % and 53 %, respectively). It appears that when the father
dies, the mother seeks to protect older female children, whereas the death of the mother
results in the child stepping into the mother’s role, at least in terms of housekeeping.
Again, the scholarship program does not appear to have been targeted well. Among all
older female children, those who lost both parents were the least likely to receive a
scholarship.
Five years after the tsunami, the impacts of parental death were greatest on
older female children who lost both parents. Relative to similar females whose
parents survived, older female children who lost both parents were 55 percentage
points less likely to be enrolled in school, were less likely to be in the workforce,
more likely to be keeping house, and 62 percentage points more likely to be
married.
2
Prior to the tsunami, older boys who lost a parent in the tsunami were better educated than those who did not
lose a parent. After the tsunami, those who lost a parent had completed less education than those whose
parents survived. For example, five years after the tsunami, boys who lost both parents had completed 10.8
years of schooling, but those who did not lose a parent had completed 11.8 years.
A.G. Cas et al.
Older female children who lost one parent were also more likely to be keeping house;
presumably, daughters substitute for the mother who died or assist the mother who was
widowed and works in the labor market to replace income lost with the death of her
husband. Whereas widowed mothers apparently tried to protect their daughters in the
short run, this does not appear to have been sustained over the longer term. Nonetheless,
in contrast with the substantially lower human capital of older male children who lost
their fathers or both parents, there is no evidence that older female children who lost one
or both parents completed less education since the tsunami than similar females whose
parents survived.
The fact that older female children who lost both parents are transitioning
into the adult role of marriage earlier than similar female children whose
parents survived likely reflects at least two influences. First, the death of both
parents left many of these older female children with fewer psychosocial and
economic resources, and possibly a desire to form a new family earlier than
would otherwise be the case. Second, the higher rates of mortality among
prime-age women, relative to prime-age men, substantially changed the local-
area marriage markets. Five years after the tsunami, essentially all the prime
age men who were widowed by the tsunami had remarried (Burrows et al.
2012). Whatever the reasons for the relatively early marriage of these girls, it is
not clear whether the death of both parents will have an enduring impact on
their well-being. Future waves of STAR will provide evidence on this important
question.
We turn next to results for the younger children, who were between the ages of
9 and 14 at the pre-tsunami baseline. Results are reported for males in the first
two columns of Table 4. Although younger males were no more or less likely to
be enrolled in school if one or both parents died in the tsunami than were similar
children whose parents survived, they were 32 percentage points more likely to
have received a scholarship if the father died or both parents died. If both
parents died, they were less likely to be working or doing housework; and if
the father died, they were also less likely to be doing housework. It is possible
that these effects on time allocation are driven by the scholarship program. There
is little evidence suggesting significant longer-term impacts of orphanhood on these
younger male children apart from a slightly higher probability of helping with
housework if either the mother or father died.
3
Results for younger female children are reported in the second two columns of
Tab le 4. Those who lost their mother or both parents were significantly more
likely to be enrolled in school. Effective targeting of scholarships to young girls
who lost both parents may explain one piece of these results. It does not, however,
explain the higher enrollment rates among girls whose mother died, given that they
are no more likely to receive a scholarship than female children whose parents
survived. Moreover, young female children who lost their father are more likely to
have received a scholarship, but their enrollment rates were the lowest of all
groups. No significant differences emerge in the probability of working and doing
3
Male children whose father or both parents died were more likely to be working after the tsunami; although
the estimated effect is substantively large, it is not statistically significant.
Impact of Parental Death on Child Well-being
housework among younger female children who lost one or both parents relative to
those who did not.
Five years later, younger female children who lost both parents were 51 percentage
points less likely to be enrolled in school. Loss of a father has an effect that is in the
same direction (but is half the magnitude and not statistically significant). Although
there are no differences in the amount of schooling completed since the tsunami for
these young women, relative to those whose parents survived, the lower enrollment
rates suggest that gaps in completed schooling may emerge in the coming years.
Whereas loss of a mother or a father resulted in significantly lower rates of working
in the market, loss of both parents resulted in a 24 % increase in that probability: these
double-orphaned girls left school and entered the labor force earlier than similar girls
whose parents survived. Death of a father also resulted in higher rates of housekeeping,
suggesting that these young girls—like older female children—are substituting for their
mothers.
Discussion and Conclusions
The potential repercussions for children of the death of a parent are likely to be
multifaceted and to evolve over time. The role in the family played by the
parent who dies goes unfilled for at least some period of time. The surviving
parent or caregiver may assume some of the deceased parent’s responsibilities;
and depending on the child’s age and gender, the child may also take on some
of those responsibilities. The child’s relationship with the surviving parent
(and/or other relatives and caregivers) likely changes, and the child may strike
out on his or her own earlier than if the parent had not died. Parental death is
also likely to be accompanied by changes in the socioeconomic status of
surviving family members. All these processes—and their impacts on the lives
of the children—evolve over time. We have investigated both the short-term
and longer-term impacts of parental death on human capital–related indicators
of well-being of children.
Using data collected before and after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, we
examine the impact of death of one or both parents on child outcomes soon after
the tsunami and over the longer term. Because the tsunami was unexpected and
survival depended largely on where people were located when the water came
ashore, it is reasonable to assume that parents who died in the tsunami did not
invest more (or less) in their children in anticipation of their children becoming
orphans. This assumption is less likely to be satisfied in studies of death of parents
after an illness, such as HIV. Nonetheless, it is a leap of faith to assume that those
children who were orphaned by the tsunami can be treated as randomly drawn
from the population of all children. The evidence indicates that before the tsunami,
children orphaned by the tsunami were different from those who were not or-
phaned. We therefore present estimates of the impact of parental death on child
well-being in models of human capital accumulation and time allocation that take
into account these preexisting differences by including child fixed effects. These
estimates depend on longitudinal data that measure child outcomes before and after
the tsunami.
A.G. Cas et al.
Estimates with child fixed effects can be given a causal interpretation under the
assumption that preexisting differences between children orphaned by the tsunami and
children whose parents survived reflect characteristics that do not change for the child
during the study period. Such characteristics might include, for example, parental desire
to invest in the human capital of the child, the child’s ability, and the ambitions of the
parents and the child.
It is possible that children, families, and communities changed because of the
tsunami. Parental death occurred in the context of considerable upheaval. On one hand,
this period is likely to be a time when children particularly need their parents to
navigate the new landscape. On the other hand, the extended family and community
may respond to protect orphaned children. We conducted qualitative interviews with
young adults who had lost parents seven years after the tsunami. Our interviews
revealed cases where sets of siblings who were separated by the death of their parents
at the time of the tsunami returned to their original communities to set up households
with the help of more distant relatives who were also living in the area. It is important to
interpret our estimates as inclusive of such responses by extended family members.
The communities included in this study were selected because they were heavily
damaged by the tsunami, as measured by a comparison of satellite imagery before and
after the tsunami. It is possible that children who were orphaned by the tsunami are
clustered in communities that suffered more damage than other areas and thus that our
results are driven by this heterogeneity. Our results suggest that this is not the case.
First, parents died and left orphaned children in more than one-half of the heavily
damaged communities. In these communities, the proportion of children who were
orphaned ranged from 5 % to 85 %. On average, slightly more than one-quarter of
children who survived the tsunami were orphaned. The models reported in Tables 3and 4
have been reestimated excluding the communities in which no child was orphaned by the
tsunami. The estimates for this subset of communities are slightly less precise, but none of
our conclusions are affected. For example, in specifications using this smaller set of
communities, over the longer term, older males who lost both parents completed 1.9 fewer
years of schooling (SE = 0.5) since the tsunami, and those who lost their fathers completed
1.5 fewer years of schooling (SE = 0.7) after the tsunami. The comparable estimates in
Tab le 3are 1.7 and 1.3 fewer years of education, respectively. Older females who lost both
parents are 58 percentage points more likely to be married (SE = 8) in the model with the
reduced set of communities, compared with a 62 percentage point difference in Table 3.
Possibly the poorer education outcomes of older orphans are driven by their living in
areas where the tsunami reduced access to schools. We find no evidence to support this
hypothesis. The STAR community survey measures the damage to buildings, infrastruc-
ture, and services (including schools), as well as changes in prices, access to markets,
and employment opportunities after the tsunami. The fraction of orphaned children in a
community does not predict whether junior or senior secondary schools were damaged
in the community or whether access to such schools worsened after the tsunami.
More generally, in an effort to take into account changes in communities in the
aftermath of the tsunami, we reestimated the models in Tables 3and 4, including
measures of the extent of damage to the communities that resulted from the tsunami.
These controls include indices of the degree of water inundation and visible destruction
in the tsunami’s aftermath, as well as a measure of reduced access to senior secondary
schools. Adding these controls had no discernible impact on the magnitude or
Impact of Parental Death on Child Well-being
significance of the estimated effects reported in this article and did not affect any of our
conclusions.
Changes in the children themselves and their extended families resulting from
the experience of the tsunami cannot be separately identified from the impact of
parental death. This affects the generalizability of our results. We find that the impact
of parental death varies with the age and gender of the child and that shorter-term
impacts are not reliable indicators of the effects that emerge in the longer term. An older
male child who lost his father or both parents in the tsunami has substantially lower
levels of education and is more likely to be working than a son whose parents survived
the tsunami. It is likely that older females who lost both parents will also have less
human capital than those that did not; these females are less likely to be in school or
working and are much more likely to be married five years after the tsunami. An older
female is more likely to be doing housework if her mother, her father, or both parents
died, suggesting that she substitutes for the parent who died in a complex way. These
children will likely carry the costs of parental death through their entire lives.
The impact of parental death on younger children is more muted. Younger males are
largely protected from the deleterious impact of the death of either parent. Whereas this
may be true for a younger female who lost either her mother or father, those who lost
both parents appear to be on trajectories of lower human capital investments that have
not fully played out. It is possible that scholarship programs targeting younger children
who lost their fathers or both parents offset negative impacts on enrolment among these
children immediately after the tsunami. More generally, the impact of parental death
may have been offset by the influx of assistance after the tsunami, which included
opening temporary schools and subsequent reconstruction of infrastructure. Children
whose parents survived were also able to take advantage of these services, and those
children serve as the controls in our models.
The literature on HIV/AIDS mortality in Africa indicates that a mother’sdeath
typically has significant negative consequences for child education, whereas a father’s
death has negligible and insignificant effects. It has been suggested that this may, in
part, reflect the fact that many children do not coreside with their fathers in Africa. As
shown in Table 1, the vast majority of children coreside with both parents in Aceh. In
contrast with the African literature, we find that a father’s death in the tsunami has
significant negative consequences for the educational attainment of older sons, whereas
the impact of maternal death is more muted. The evidence suggests that both the
children and the surviving parent substitute for the parent who died. However, the
death of both parents has the largest and substantively most important impacts on
older males, older females, and possibly younger females. These double-orphans
are the most vulnerable, at least in the context of the tsunami. This is an important
result because no population-based study has examined the impact of the loss of
both parents in a longitudinal design that compares children before and after the
death of the parents.
Acknowledgments The authors thank Arizal, Loren Brandt, Esther Duflo, Jed Friedman, Thomas Gillespie,
Husnul Khalik, Dilip Mookherjee, Mark Rosenzweig, Shelly Lundberg, Bondan Sikoki, John Strauss Cecep
Sumantri, and Christopher Udry for helpful comments. This work was supported by grants from the World Bank,
the MacArthur Foundation (05-85158-000), the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development
(HD052762, HD051970), the National Institute on Aging (AG031266), the National Science Foundation (CMS-
0527763), and the Fogarty International Center (TW007699). All opinions and errors are those of the authors.
A.G. Cas et al.
Appendix
Ta b l e 5 Attrition—Comparison of characteristics at baseline: Means, differences, and standard errors (in parentheses) of survivors (relative to those who died) and among survivors,
those who were interviewed (relative to those not interviewed)
Baseline Characteristics
All Age
Eligible
Children
Died in
Tsunami
Survived
Tsu nami
Difference
((3) –(2))
Interviewed in
First Resurvey
Not
Interviewed in
First Resurvey
Difference
((5) –(6))
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
Age (years) 13.0 13.0 13.0 0.03 13.0 12.9 0.12
(0.14) (0.24)
Male (%) 52.3 46.1 55.0 8.86 56.1 47.9 –8.24
(4.30) (5.20)
Education (years) 5.6 5.7 5.5 –0.18 5.5 5.7 –0.20
(0.25) (0.41)
Enrolled in School (%) 92.0 93.0 91.7 –1.36 92.5 86.3 6.20
(1.82) (4.76)
Working for a Wage (%) 4.1 3.1 4.5 1.37 4.3 5.7 –1.39
(1.72) (3.44)
Engaged in Housekeeping (%) 6.5 3.7 7.7 3.97 7.4 9.5 –2.12
(1.84) (3.31)
Per capita Expenditure 39.7 38.3 40.2 1.93 40.3 39.6 0.78
(Rp 10,000 per month)
a
(3.84) (5.15)
Household Size 5.9 5.7 5.9 0.21 5.9 6.1 –0.16
(0.22) (0.71)
Sample Size 1,173 345 828 709 119
a
Rp 10,000 is approximately equal to $1US.
Impact of Parental Death on Child Well-being
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which
permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source
are credited.
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Impact of Parental Death on Child Well-being
