Wars and child health: Evidence from the Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Akresh, Richard; Lucchetti, Leonardo; Thirumurthy, Harsha
• 署名单位: University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2012.04.001
• 发表日期: 2012
• 页码: 330-340
• 关键词: Child health; CONFLICT; AFRICA

摘要

Conflict between and within countries can have lasting health and economic consequences, but identifying such effects can be empirically challenging. This paper uses household survey data from Eritrea to estimate the effect of exposure to the 1998-2000 Eritrea-Ethiopia war on children's health. The identification strategy exploits exogenous variation in the conflict's geographic extent and timing and the exposure of different birth cohorts to the fighting. The unique survey data include details on each household's migration history, which allows us to measure a child's geographic location during the war and without which war exposure would be incorrectly classified. War-exposed children have lower height-for-age Z-scores, with similar effects for children born before or during the war. Both boys and girls who are born during the war experience negative impacts due to conflict. Effects are robust to including region-specific time trends, alternative conflict exposure measures, and mother fixed effects. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.