Climate vulnerability and child health outcomes in developing countries: Do women's political empowerment and female education make the difference?

Health as a common good is of paramount importance for the world, especially in developing countries. This paper contributes to the literature by analysing the effect of climate vulnerability on child health outcomes in a sample of 107 developing countries over the period 2000–2020. We also analyse the mediating role of women's political empowerment and women's education in the relationship between climate vulnerability and child health outcomes. Using the method of generalised moments in a two-stage system and linear regression absorbing several levels of fixed effects, we found robust evidence that climate vulnerability worsens child health outcomes. We also found that women's political empowerment (WPE) and women's education mitigate the negative effect of climate vulnerability on child health outcomes. These results remain robust against several alternative tests and therefore highlight the need to better examine how the health consequences of climate vulnerability are structured by gender in developing countries. Given the importance of women as agents of change, it would be more beneficial for policymakers to include them in the decision-making process. • We use a dataset covering 107 developing countries over 21 years. • Child health outcomes: IMR, NMR, under-5 mortality rate, and vaccination coverage. • Linear regression absorbing multi-levels of fixed effects, and S-GMM are used. • Climate vulnerability leads to worse child health outcomes. • WPE and female education mitigate the effects of vulnerability on child health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]