The Inuence of Conict on the Demand for Education in the Basque Region

It has previously been shown that civil conict inuences many economic factors, including education, which play an important role in development and economic growth. Previous authors working on the inuence of conict on education have, however, always focused strongly on the supply-side e¤ects, whereas this paper examines the inuence of conict on the demand for ed-ucation. It is theoretically shown that, under relatively general conditions, individuals living in a conict area have an incentive to increase their level of education and that this e¤ect depends on the individuals skill level. This hypothesis is then tested using the conict in the Basque Region as a case study, which is an example of a conict in which one would not expect strong supply-side e¤ects. Using the other Spanish regions, an arti\u85cial region is cre-ated in which the population has a similar educational distribution as in the Basque Region. When comparing the true and arti\u85cial regions, it can clearly be seen that for individuals with a medium level of education, there is a strong incentive to increase their education level, which is in concordance with the theoretical model