Footprints of War and Famine: Intrauterine and Inter-generational Effects of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and the 1974 Bengal Famine

This study utilizes the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war and the subsequent 1974 Bengal famine as a "double hit"
design to estimate their impact on the health status of intrauterine birth cohorts. As a novel attempt, the study also
investigates whether such “health legacy" is passed onto the next generation. By addressing the selection problem
via Heckman two-step estimation and using the rich 1996 Matlab Health and Socioeconomic Survey (MHSS), the
study finds that individuals born or conceived during the war, who faced the subsequent famine, had lower health
outcomes compared to non-shock exposed cohorts. This provides evidence for the intrauterine growth restriction
(IGR) hypothesis. The study also finds that children whose mothers were conceived or born during the war had
significantly lower health outcomes with the effect being more pronounced among daughters than sons. The latter
finding suggests the possibility of inter-generational transfer of the IGR effect.