Armed Conflict and Schooling: Evidence from the 1994 Rwandan Genocide

Richard Akresh () and Damien de Walque

No 3516, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

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 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 J13 O12 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2008-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (155)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Armed conflict and schooling: evidence from the 1994 Rwandan genocide (2008)
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