Health and Civil War in Rural Burundi

IZA Discussion Paper No. 2951

MICROCON Research Working Paper No. 5

52 Pages Posted: 17 Aug 2007

See all articles by Tom Bundervoet

Tom Bundervoet

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) - MOSI

Philip Verwimp

Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) - Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management; Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) - European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics (ECARES)

Richard Akresh

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: April 2008

Abstract

We combine household survey data with event data on the timing and location of armed conflicts to examine the impact of Burundi's civil war on children's health status. The identification strategy exploits exogenous variation in the war's timing across provinces and the exposure of children's birth cohorts to the fighting. After controlling for province of residence, birth cohort, individual and household characteristics, and province-specific time trends, we find an additional month of war exposure decreases children's height for age z-scores by 0.047 standard deviations compared to non-exposed children. The effect is robust to specifications exploiting alternative sources of exogenous variation.

Keywords: child health, economic shocks, stunting, Africa, civil war

JEL Classification: I12, J13, O12

Suggested Citation

Bundervoet, Tom and Verwimp, Philip and Akresh, Richard, Health and Civil War in Rural Burundi (April 2008). IZA Discussion Paper No. 2951, MICROCON Research Working Paper No. 5, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1006777 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1006777

Tom Bundervoet

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) - MOSI

Brussels
Belgium

Philip Verwimp

Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) - Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management ( email )

19 Av Franklin Roosevelt
1050
Brussels
Belgium

Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) - European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics (ECARES) ( email )

Ave. Franklin D Roosevelt, 50 - C.P. 114
Brussels, B-1050
Belgium

Richard Akresh (Contact Author)

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ( email )

601 E John St
Champaign, IL Champaign 61820
United States

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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