tailieunhanh - Armed Conflict and Children’s Health – Exploring new directions: The case of Kashmir

As far as the MDGs are concerned, only 16 percent of countries are on track to meet the child mortality target and, on average, the poorest fifth of the population saw child mortality falling half as fast as the general population (Wagstaff and Claeson 2003). Though not one sub-Saharan African country is on track to meet the child mortality target, overall progress toward reducing child mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa was faster in the 1990s than the 1980s. In the developing world overall, most countries are on track to meet the child health goals. | H i C N Households in Conflict Network The Institute of Development Studies - at the University of Sussex - Falmer - Brighton - BN1 9RE Armed Conflict and Children s Health - Exploring new directions The case of Kashmir Anton Parlow HiCN Working Paper 119 August 2012 Abstract The exposure to violence in utero and early in life has adverse impacts on children s age-adjusted height z-scores . Using the experience of the Kashmir insurgency I find that children more affected by the insurgency are to standard deviations smaller compared with children less affected by the insurgency. The effect is stronger for children who were born during peaks in violence. A robust finding in the health literature is that shorter children perform worse in schools in jobs and are sicker throughout their life. Here children already negatively affected by the insurgency in their height are also more likely to be sick in the two weeks prior to the survey. Key words Armed conflict health children Doctoral Student Department of Economics University of Wisconsin Milwaukee aparlow@ 1 Introduction Children exposed to negative external shocks in utero or early in life have higher mortality rates lower birth weights and are shorter for their age. These shocks can include recessions Cutler et al. 2002 famines Stein et Al. 1975 Almond et Al. 2008 droughts Akresh and Verwimp 2006 pandemics Almond 2006 wildfires Jayachandran 2008 or radioactive fallout Almond Edlund and Palme 2009 Danzer and Danzer 2011 A new dimension to these external shocks are armed conflicts. Armed conflicts and their effects on human capital formation have been in the focus of empirical research since the mid 2000 s. This includes education Shemyakina 2011 Yuksel-Akbulut 2009 Swee 2009 displacement Deininger et Al. 2004 labor force participation Menon and van der Meulen 2010 and the two main predictors of health later in life low birth weight Camacho 2009 and height early in life Akresh and Verwimp .