It has previously been shown that civil conflict influences many economic factors, including education, which play an important role in development and economic growth. Previous authors working on the influence of conflict on education have, however, always focused strongly on the supply-side effects, whereas this paper examines the influence of conflict on the demand for education. It is theoretically shown that, under relatively general conditions, individuals living in a conflict area have an incentive to increase their level of education and that this effect depends on the individual's skill level. This hypothesis is then tested using the conflict in the Basque Region as a case study, which is an example of a conflict in which one would not expect strong supply-side effects. Using the other Spanish regions, an artificial region is created in which the population has a similar educational distribution as in the Basque Region. When comparing the true and artificial 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.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research in its series Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin with number
927.