# Long-term impacts on human capital of children exposed to a natural disaster

> **NIH NIH R03** · UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA CHAPEL HILL · 2024 · $77,750

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
This project will investigate the long-term impacts of an unanticipated large-scale natural disaster on the
human capital and wellbeing of exposed youth. Data will come from the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and
Recovery (STAR), a 15-year panel study of coastal communities, households, and individuals in Aceh and
North Sumatra on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, who were at risk of exposure to the 2004 Indian Ocean
earthquake and tsunami. In contrast to previous studies of childhood aversity on long-term outcomes, STAR is
designed to leverage the natural experiment of the tsunami to study the causal effects of large-scale adverse
events on a large sample of individuals that is representative of the pre-tsunami population. Our project will
focus on respondents who were under the age of 17 at the time of the disaster and were therefore in
adolescence and early adulthood (roughly 15-31 years of age) at the 15-year follow-up. We will investigate the
separate impacts of both community- and individual-level tsunami exposures on outcomes related to human
capital spanning education, cognitive performance, and health, as well as domains of early adult life like work
and earnings, marriage, fertility, and migration. We will contribute evidence on how effects differ by age of
exposure and heterogeneity in effects between, for example, males and females, those who lost parents or
other family members. This project will also fully leverage all eight rounds of STAR panel data (one baseline
and seven follow-up rounds) to closely trace out the trajectories of child outcomes in the initial and intermediate
post-disaster periods, as well as continue to follow those outcomes into the longer-term, which will provide
detailed insights into post-disaster resiliency and recovery and into the mechanisms underlying the long-term
impacts of the disaster that studies with fewer survey rounds cannot observe.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10828425
- **Project number:** 5R03HD111816-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA CHAPEL HILL
- **Principal Investigator:** Nicholas S Ingwersen
- **Activity code:** R03 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $77,750
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-04-15 → 2025-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10828425

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10828425, Long-term impacts on human capital of children exposed to a natural disaster (5R03HD111816-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10828425. Licensed CC0.

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