Armed Conflict and Schooling: Evidence from the 1994 Rwandan Genocide

38 Pages Posted: 5 Jun 2008

See all articles by Richard Akresh

Richard Akresh

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

Damien de Walque

World Bank - Development Research Group (DECRG); World Bank

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: May 2008

Abstract

To examine the impact of Rwanda's 1994 genocide on children's schooling, the authors combine two cross-sectional household surveys collected before and after the genocide. The identification strategy uses pre-war data to control for an age group's baseline schooling and exploits variation across provinces in the intensity of killings and which children's cohorts were school-aged when exposed to the war. The findings show a strong negative impact of the genocide on schooling, with exposed children completing one-half year less education representing an 18.3 percent decline. The effect is robust to including control variables, alternative sources for genocide intensity, and an instrumental variables strategy.

Keywords: civil war, human capital investment, education, genocide, Africa

JEL Classification: I20, J13, O12, O15

Suggested Citation

Akresh, Richard and de Walque, Damien, Armed Conflict and Schooling: Evidence from the 1994 Rwandan Genocide (May 2008). IZA Discussion Paper No. 3516, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1139906 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1139906

Richard Akresh (Contact Author)

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ( email )

601 E John St
Champaign, IL Champaign 61820
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IZA Institute of Labor Economics

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Damien De Walque

World Bank - Development Research Group (DECRG)

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Washington, DC 20433
United States

World Bank ( email )

1818 H Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20433
United States

HOME PAGE: http://econ.worldbank.org/staff/ddewalque

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