Essays on Civil War and Welfare: Child Mortality, Learning Attainment, and Access to Water and Sanitation Services

This dissertation deals with the effects of civil war on child and infant mortality, learning attainment and access to water and sanitation services. Household and individual level data (such as theDemographic and Health Surveys and the Colombian Standardized Saber test) are extensively used along with data on conflict intensity (such as Prio-Uppsala Battle Deaths and the Colombian PoliceCrime statistics). The first chapter explores how different intensity levels of civil war lead to changes in child and infant mortality in Latin American countries that have experienced lengthy civil wars (Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Peru). Econometric procedures indicate that civil war increases the risk of mortality during the first year of life. Using individual level test scoresfrom Colombia, as the measure of learning attainment, the second chapter studies how exposure to civil war at birth and at the year of the test impacts math and language learning. Exposure to conflictat birth reduces the learning attainment of 5th grade students. Results seem to be not conclusive for 9th and 11 grade students due to sample attrition. The third chapter estimates how civil warmodifies households' access to water and sanitation services and, in turn, the health of children in Colombia. Employing different methods to control for the civil war intensity, regressions found thatcivil war leads to contradictory effects on access to water and sanitation services. Overall, estimations throughout the three chapters provide strong evidence supporting the existence of negative effects of civil war on child and infant mortality, learning attainment and access to water and sanitation services. The techniques and the theoretical model used in the third chapter also open up the way for the existence of households' adaptive behavior while the conflict goes on. Results also suggest a role for government interventions in helping households cope with these negative effects