2020ERF WORKING PAPERS SERIES Violent Conflict and Vaccinations: Evidence from Iraq George Naufal, Michael Malcolm and Vidya Diwakar Working Paper No. 1438 December 2020 VIOLENT CONFLICT AND VACCINATIONS: EVIDENCE FROM IRAQ George Naufal, Michael Malcolm1 and Vidya Diwakar2 Working Paper No. 1438 December 2020 Send correspondence to: George Naufal Texas A&M University
[email protected] 1
[email protected], West Chester University. 2
[email protected], Overseas Development Institute. First published in 2020 by The Economic Research Forum (ERF) 21 Al-Sad Al-Aaly Street Dokki, Giza Egypt www.erf.org.eg Copyright © The Economic Research Forum, 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this publication are entirely those of the author(s) and should not be attributed to the Economic Research Forum, members of its Board of Trustees, or its donors. Abstract Using a generalized difference-in-differences approach, we find that children residing in high- conflict areas in Iraq are more likely to be vaccinated against tuberculosis and measles than children residing in low-conflict areas. We draw household data on vaccination from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys and we identify high-conflict area-years using geolocational conflict data from the Iraq Body Count project. While previous literature generally finds that conflict harms public health, a potential explanation for our result is heavy presence of international aid organizations in conflict areas, a phenomenon which researchers have noted in other contexts.