Malaria and Economic Development in the Short-term: Plasmodium falciparum vs Plasmodium vivax
Description
Malaria---a disease caused by parasitic microorganisms of the Plasmodium genus---has been shown to impede economic growth and socioeconomic development in the long-term. In this paper, we use annual regional data from India to show that malaria outbreaks are associated with an immediate decline in economic development approximated by night light intensity. We find the association to be significant for outbreaks of both the globally most prevalent Plasmodium species: Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax. The estimated associations are quite sizeable. Severe outbreaks correlate with night light reductions of 5% of the standard deviation for P. falciparum and 4% for P. vivax. This data set contains data for the paper replication.
Files
Steps to reproduce
We combine two main data sources. Yearly 5x5 km grid data on malaria come from MAP and contain parasite rates for both Plasmodium species. Parasite rates represent the share of the infected population estimated from parasite rate survey points using an informed Bayesian geostatistical model with a set of covariates including geographical, climatic, and socioeconomic variables (Battle et al., 2019; Weiss et al., 2019). We augment this data set with remotely sensed night light intensity grid data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). We aggregate the MAP and DMPS grid data at the level Indian 2,297 mainland districts (level 3) for the period 2001–2013. The dataset contains only aggregated data and a spatial object needed for the estimation. Variables are described in the underlying paper. Additional information and the use case can be found here: https://github.com/s-mikula/malaria_developmentRP