This study investigates the impact of hurricanes on fertility and the role of family structure in early 20th century Jamaica. Importantly, this was a time period in which there were no storm warnings or other formal disaster mitigation policies in place, allowing one to arguably identify the causal effect of storms on births without any policy interference. To this end, historical hurricane tracks and an exhaustive register of births are used to create a parish level monthly data set on births and hurricane destruction for the period 1901 to 1929. The regression analysis reveals that hurricanes impact excess births for close to 2 years after the event, with the average damaging storm causing a reduction in births of around 13%. Most of the negative effect is due to lower post-storm fertility rather than a fall in births by women affected while pregnant. There is no evidence that the fall in births was driven by fertile females dying as a result of the hurricane. Similarly, there was no discernible differential impact between single mother and two parent registered births, where the impact on the latter appears to be driven by non-marital conjugal unions.
Over the years, Jamaica has experienced sporadic cases of dengue fever. Even though the island is vulnerable to dengue, there is paucity in the spatio-temporal analysis of the disease using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing tools. Further, access to time series dengue data at the community level is a major challenge on the island. This study therefore applies the Water-Associated Disease Index (WADI) framework to analyze vulnerability to dengue in Jamaica based on past, current and future climate change conditions using three scenarios: (1) WorldClim rainfall and temperature dataset from 1970 to 2000; (2) Climate Hazard Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS) rainfall and land surface temperature (LST) as proxy for air temperature from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) for the period 2002 to 2016, and (3) maximum temperature and rainfall under the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 climate change scenario for 2030 downscaled at 25 km based on the Regional Climate Model, RegCM4.3.5. Although vulnerability to dengue varies spatially and temporally, a higher vulnerability was depicted in urban areas in comparison to rural areas. The results also demonstrate the possibility for expansion in the geographical range of dengue in higher altitudes under climate change conditions based on scenario 3. This study provides an insight into the use of data with different temporal and spatial resolution in the analysis of dengue vulnerability.
