Fig. 2: Negative effects of ENSO on child weight-for-age.

a Distribution of detrended weight-for-age z-scores (WAZ) during years classified as El Niño (red) and La Niña (blue) according to NOAA definition using NINO3.4 SSTs, with means of each distribution shown. b Epanechnikov kernel-weighted local polynomial (bandwidth 0.7) estimate of Table 1. Model 1 showing conditional association of WAZ with ENSO, differentiating countries where precipitation is negatively correlated with ENSO for >3 months in the year over >50% of country area (green) and where it is positively correlated (orange). 95% confidence intervals are shown for the estimated curves. Controls include fixed effects (indicators) for each country; country-specific mother’s age at child’s birth, total years of mother’s education, and rural vs. urban indicator; as well as UNICEF world region-specific linear trends in survey year and fixed effects for the month of interview. Histograms represent the number of observations in each precipitation correlation subsample. c Effects of ENSO on WAZ within each decade (blue) and UNICEF world region (green) in the sample (n = 1,253,176 children from 51 surveys), estimated using only locations with non-positive precipitation teleconnections. Dots signify point estimates, bars signify 95% confidence intervals, and gray shaded region and dashed line show main effect from Table 1. The 95% confidence intervals for each decade are: 1980s: [−0.070, 0.011], 1990s: [−0.086, −0.002], 2000s: [−0.063, 0.026], 2010s: [−0.047, 0.021]; and for each region are: Latin America [−0.087, −0.026], Sub-Saharan Africa [−0.050, 0.003], South Asia [−0.086, 0.006].