Armed Conflict Exposure, Human Capital Investments, And Child Labor: Evidence From Colombia

Abstract

This paper estimates the effect that exposure to armed conflict has on school drop-out and labor decisions of Colombian children between the ages of six and seventeen. We use a duration analysis methodology, complemented by biprobit estimations. Both approaches take into account the possible endogeneity of municipal conflict-related events through the use of instrumental variables. We find that conflict especially affects children older than eleven, inducing them to drop out of school and enter the labor market too early. We provide evidence that such effects may be generated through higher mortality risks, negative economic shocks and lesser school quality.

Schooling, Violent Conflict, and Gender in Burundi

“…Alderman, Hoddinott and Kinsey (2006) find that Zimbabwean children affected by the civil war in the 1970s completed less grades of schooling and/or started school later than those not affected by the shocks. Similar results are found by Angrist and Kugler (2008) and Rodriguez and Sanchez (2009) Next to this loss of educational attainment in general, Justino (2011) observes a second pattern in the results of emerging studies, to wit that secondary schooling seems to be disproportionally affected. Stewart et al (2001) find that primary school enrolments decreased in only three out of eighteen countries in their sample of countries affected by civil wars.…”

“…de Walque (2009), Merrouche (2006), Shemyakina (2006) and Swee (2009) point to this mechanism as an explanation for the reduction in educational attainment and enrolment observed in contexts of civil war. In a recent paper, Rodriguez and Sanchez (2009) test directly the effect of war on child labour and find that violent attacks in Colombian municipalities by armed groups have increased significantly the probability of school drop-out, and have increased the inclusion of children in the labour market. They show that increased mortality risks, negative economic shocks and reduction in school quality due to violence are the main channels through which armed conflict reduces human capital investments at the household level and increases child labour.…”

Conflict-Induced Poverty: Evidence from Colombia

“…An instrument in this specific case is an exogenous 5 One exception is Miguel et al (2004), who use annual rainfall growth as an instrument for income growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. 6 Other important references on the economic and social costs of conflict in Colombia include the already mentioned studies of Camacho and Rodríguez (2011), and Rodríguez and Sánchez (2012). For the long-run economic consequences see Camacho (2008).…”

“…Moreover, Rodríguez and Sánchez (2012) estimate the effect of armed conflict exposure on school drop-out and labor decisions of Colombian children, by instrumenting conflict with the number of captures of assassins.…”

“…The deterrence actions should be significantly correlated with armed conflict in the first equation, given that they proxy for both the presence and the effectiveness of the government to 8 I focus on the number of illegal drug laboratories dismantled and weapons seized because including captures of assassins (Rodríguez and Sánchez, 2012), being this a significantly different measure from a conceptual point, makes the assumption of the Sargan Test less likely to hold. On the other hand, antinarcotic operations (Camacho and Rodríguez, 2011) have many zeros and given that I do not have a panel but a cross-section, it does not give me enough variation in the first stage to estimate its effect on conflict.…”