Long-term Effects of a 1940s Cocoa Virus Outbreak in Ghana, Linked to 1993 Survey Data

Replication data for a study linking early-life exposure to the 1940s Cocoa Swollen Shoot Virus Disease (CSSVD) epidemic in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) with long-term individual outcomes. The dataset combines historical archival maps of cocoa-suitable areas and the outbreak with individual-level data from the 1993 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (DHS). Mohammed Iddrisu Kambala created this dataset, which includes derived spatial variables and Stata .do files to reproduce all analyses from the accompanying paper.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the long-term health and socioeconomic effects of early-life adversity based on historical epidemic exposure.
• Conducting spatial econometric analysis based on DHS cluster coordinates intersected with historical cocoa-suitability maps.
• Replicating econometric models and robustness checks using the provided Stata .do files.
• Studying the intersection of agricultural disease shocks and human development outcomes over a 50-year period.

Strengths

• Includes full replication materials (Stata .do files) for all descriptive statistics, regressions, and figures.
• Combines two distinct data sources: historical archival maps and a nationally representative 1993 household survey.
• Derived spatial variables were constructed by intersecting DHS cluster coordinates with digitized historical polygons.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.
• Excludes restricted DHS GPS coordinates in compliance with privacy policy, which may limit precise geospatial analysis.

Provenance

Source

Harvard Dataverse, accompanying a published academic article.

Collection Method

Combination of historical archival information digitized from maps and individual-level data from the 1993 Ghana DHS.

Time Range

Primary historical shock in the 1940s, linked to individual outcomes measured in 1993.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-09 21:55:20; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Gold Coast (now Ghana), specifically cocoa-suitable areas.