Job Market Paper

Long term economic development depends on household investments in children’s human capital. Social networks can affect demand for human capital investments by relaxing household time or budget constraints or by defining and reinforcing human capital preferences. However, empirically identifying the effect of social networks on human capital investment is usually problematic because households self-select their networks in ways that may be correlated with their abilities to make these investments. In Northern Ugandan Internally Displaced Persons Camps, networks were not entirely self-selected. Rebel activity, which forced households into camps in 2002, disrupted pre-existing social networks in ways that were exogenous to household human capital preferences. This paper uses the exogenous variation in network disruption to identify the impact of networks on child health outcomes. Using household survey data from the Uganda School-Based Feeding Evaluation, household data that I collected, and administrative data from the World Food Programme and local governments, I show that an increase in the average household’s network size by one household (or roughly 25 percent of the network) improves height-for-age z-scores by.27 standard deviations for children born in the camp. This improvement is equivalent to moving from the