# Cognitive performance following a natural disaster and demographic and socioeconomic outcomes

> **NIH NIH R03** · UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA CHAPEL HILL · 2024 · $155,500

## Abstract

Abstract
The transition to young adulthood involves navigating educational investments, job opportunities, entry into
marital unions, and decisions about whether and when to have children. Behaviors and outcomes in these
spheres are almost certainly shaped by levels of cognition, but we know relatively little about these links,
particularly in low resource settings. This project will provide novel insights into how domain-specific cognitive
skills that have a foundation in neuroscience are related to education, labor market success, entry into
marriage, and fertility for young adults in Indonesia. Data are drawn from the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath
and Recovery (STAR), a 15-year population-representative panel study of 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. STAR is representative of the pre-disaster population. In addition, we will
harness data from a specially-designed subcomponent of STAR, the Extended Assessment of Biomarkers and
Cognition (EABC), which involves two rounds of longitudinal data of a 25% randomly-selected subsample of
STAR respondents that includes a tablet-based approach to precisely measuring seven different cognitive
skills using game-like tasks adapted for the setting from widely-used assessments. We focus on respondents
who were between 8 and 22 years in the first round of the EABC (13 years after the disaster), and so they
were in adolescence and early adulthood in the second round (20 years after the disaster). We leverage our
cognitive data and the panel design of the EABC and STAR to provide evidence on the association between
performance in the cognitive tasks and key markers of the transition to adulthood. We will also examine the
role of parental and family background characteristics in the association between cognition and early adult
outcomes by adjusting for background characteristics and estimating models that focus on comparisons
between siblings. Finally, we leverage the fact that the tsunami was completely unanticipated, exploiting
exogenous local variation in the intensity of exposure to the tsunami to examine the role of a large
unanticipated natural disaster in moderating the relationship between cognitive performance and early adult
outcomes.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10870923
- **Project number:** 1R03HD114956-01
- **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:** $155,500
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-08-01 → 2026-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10870923

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10870923, Cognitive performance following a natural disaster and demographic and socioeconomic outcomes (1R03HD114956-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10870923. Licensed CC0.

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