RSSE: John Cruzatti (Erasmus University Rotterdam) Shaken, not Stunted? Natural Disasters, Health and Recovery around the World

It is our pleasure that John Cruzatti (Erasmus University Rotterdam) will present on Thursday, May 14, 2026, at 12:45 in room RB437 about the topic “Shaken, not Stunted? Natural Disasters, Health and Recovery around the World”.

Registration is not required and anyone who would like to attend is warmly invited.

It is also possible to participate online via MS Teams at this link. In case of any connection issues, please contact lubomir.cingl@vse.cz.

ABSTRACT: A substantial share of the world’s children resides in disaster-prone areas and suffers from stunted growth. Child growth in the first 1000 days of life can falter depending on health endowments, shocks and investments. We investigate growth faltering and catch-up in children exposed to comparable earthquakes in utero. Our analysis leverages georeferenced health and earthquake data from almost a million children under the age of five across 55 countries. Our preferred models exploit within cluster or mother variation and control for temporal trends. On average, we document adverse effects on children's height that are more pronounced when earthquakes are more unexpected and higher in magnitude. These average effects, however, conceal negative short-term effects and recovery mechanisms via parental health investments, economic recouping, and foreign aid, which facilitate subsequent catch-up growth of children. We discuss our findings and contributions within the literature on child health and disasters, which is relatively sparse on the analysis of post-disaster recovery mechanisms and has largely been confined to single-country studies.  

BIO: John Cruzatti is an Assistant Professor at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). His research uses high-resolution geospatial data to study how global economic policies, political economy dynamics, and natural or human-made shocks shape local development outcomes such as economic activity and health. Additionally, he leads the institutional partnership between the ISS and Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (ESPOL).