Armed Conflict, Children's Education and Mortality: New Evidence from Côte d'Ivoire

Idrissa Ouili, Université de Montréal

Côte d’Ivoire was recently affected by a political instability and civil war. Using nationally representative household surveys, I exploit temporal and geographical variations of this political instability to identify its causal effect on children’s schooling and child mortality. I find that individuals who lived in conflict areas and who reached the official age to be enrolled in school within the period of the instability, have 10% less chance to be enrolled in school. Students who spent their school age during the conflict and who lived in an affected area, experienced a decline in schooling attainment of more than one year. High school students experimented a decline in schooling attainment of close to two years. In addition, results show that Ivorian armed conflict increased under-five-years old children’s mortality by at least 3%. A placebo test suggests that the results are not driven by a pre-existing differences across conflict and non-conflict areas.