Health and Civil War in Rural Burundi Research Working Paper 5 Tom Bundervoet, Philip Verwimp and Richard Akresh April 2008 Correct citation: Bundervoet, T., Verwimp, P. and Akresh, R. Health and Civil War in Rural Burundi. MICROCON Research Working Paper 5, Brighton: MICROCON. First published in 2008 © Tom Bundervoet, Philip Verwimp and Richard Akresh 2008 ISBN 13: 978 185864 684 7 For further information, please contact: MICROCON: A Micro Level Analysis of Violent Conflict, Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RE Tel: +44 (0)1273 872891 Email:
[email protected] Web: www.microconflict.eu Funded by the European Commission’s Sixth Framework Programme 1 Health and Civil War in Rural Burundi Tom Bundervoet2, Philip Verwimp3, and Richard Akresh4 MICROCON Research Working Paper 5 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. JEL codes: I12, J13, O12 Keywords: Child health, economic shocks, stunting, Africa, civil war 1 The authors would like to thank Jean-Marie Baland, Robert Bates, Tony Addison, Marcel Fafchamps, Olga Shemyakina, Peter Uvin and participants at HiCN's first annual workshop in 2006 in Berlin, at the 2006 CSAE conference, at the 2007 NEUDC, and at seminars in Namur, ECARES-ULB and DIW-Berlin for helpful comments on earlier drafts.