Effects of extreme climate events and child mortality on total fertility rate in Bangladesh.

Floods, storms, and temperature extremes are examples of extreme weather events that have a substantial influence on a country's demographic dynamics, including migration, fertility, and mortality. Changes in population size, composition, and distribution may result from these occurrences. This study, which spans the years 1966-2018, looks at how Bangladesh's total fertility rate (TFR) is affected by extreme weather events and child mortality, including neonatal, infant, male infant, and under-five mortality. We use data from secondary publicly accessible sources, such as the World Bank and The Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), and we investigate the correlations using the autoregressive integrated moving average model (ARIMA), complemented by bivariate and multivariable analyses. Our findings from the univariate analysis are noteworthy. Total extreme climate events (ß = -0.345, 95 % CI: 0.510, -0.180), as well as individual extreme climate events, such as extreme temperatures (ß = -1.176, 95 % CI: 1.88, -0.47), floods (ß = -0.644, 95 % CI: 1.0729, -0.216), and storms (ß = -0.351, 95 % CI: 0.63159, -0.07154), exhibited negative associations with the TFR. Additionally, factors such as contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) (ß = -0.085, 95 % CI: 0.09072, -0.07954) and gross national income (GNI) per capita (ß = -0.003, 95 % CI: 0.0041123, -0.0024234) were negatively correlated with the TFR. Conversely, various categories of child mortality, namely, infants (ß = 0.041, 95 % CI: 0.040474, 0.042748), males (ß = 0.038, 95 % CI:0.037719, 0.039891), and under-five (ß = 0.026, 95 % CI:0.025684, 0.026979) - are positively associated with TFR. Controlling for two pivotal confounding factors, time and GNI per capita, yielded consistent results in the multivariate analysis. These findings provide insight on the dual impact of extreme weather events, which can reduce TFR while also raising it through infant mortality. This phenomena may be due to the increased vulnerability of younger children in climate-event-prone areas, prompting parents to seek additional children as both a replacement for lost offspring and an insurance mechanism against future child loss.

Extreme Weather Events and Spiraling Debt: A Double Whammy for Bangladeshis Affected by Climate Change.

This study explores how people living in different areas of Bangladesh prone to extreme weather events (EWEs) in the form of floods, cyclones, or droughts perceive climate change, the impacts they suffer in the face of EWEs, and how they cope with their consequences. Qualitative data was collected through in-depth interviews with 73 respondents from three different areas of Bangladesh and subsequently analyzed. The results show that there are similarities and differences between respondents from regions with different vulnerabilities in terms of their views and perceptions about what climate change is its causes, the consequences of EWEs, and the strategies they adopt to cope with their effects. Respondents understood climate change based on their own local experiences of climate change and EWEs. A main finding is that people in all three areas are driven to borrow money in the face of these events as a survival strategy and to be able to continue to support their families. As the climate is set to change rapidly and EWEs to occur more frequently and regularly, it will become routine for those most vulnerable to them to have to cope and live with their impacts. Increased reliance on borrowing risks leading to a debt spiral for already vulnerable people. They are thus subject to a "double whammy": on the one hand the direct effects of climate change and EWEs on their lives and livelihoods and on the other getting caught in a debt spiral sparked by times of crisis.

The link between climate change, food security and fertility: The case of Bangladesh.

Climate change is likely to worsen the food security situation through its impact on food production, which may indirectly affect fertility behaviour. This study examines the direct and indirect effects of climate change (e.g., temperature and precipitation) via the production of major crops, as well as their short- and long-term effects on the total fertility rate (TFR) in Bangladesh. We used structural equation modelling (SEM) to perform path analysis and distinguish the direct influence of climate change on fertility and its indirect influence on fertility through food security. We also applied the error correction model (ECM) to analyze the time-series data on temperature and precipitation, crop production and fertility rate of Bangladesh from 1966 to 2015. The results show that maximum temperature has a direct effect and indirect negative effect-via crop production-on TFR, while crop production has a direct positive effect and indirect negative effect-via infant mortality-on TFR. In the short term, TFR responds negatively to the maximum temperature but positively in the long term. The effect of rainfall on TFR is found to be direct, positive, but mainly short-term. Although indicators of economic development play an important part in the fertility decline in Bangladesh, some climate change parameters and crop production are non-negligible factors.