IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/120907.html

The scars of civil war: the long-term welfare effects of the Salvadoran armed conflict

Author

Listed:
  • Acosta, Pablo
  • Baez, Javier E.
  • Caruso, Germán
  • Carcach, Carlos

Abstract

This paper estimates the long-term effects on human capital accumulation and subsequent labor market outcomes of in utero and early childhood exposure to the civil war in El Salvador (1980–92), the second longest and deadliest civil conflict in Central America. Identification is obtained from spatial and intertemporal variation in the intensity of the conflict drawn from historical archive data comprising records of human casualties, disappearances, and refugees. The results show that people born in highly violent areas during the civil war saw a reduction in their probability of being employed by 6 percentage points, and of getting a high-skilled job by 5 percentage points, 20 to 30 years hence. The civil war also reduced their education by 0.8 year, as well as their enrollment and literacy rates. Subgroup analysis indicates that exposed males and indigenous groups experienced the largest losses in human capital and had weaker performance in the labor market.

Suggested Citation

  • Acosta, Pablo & Baez, Javier E. & Caruso, Germán & Carcach, Carlos, 2023. "The scars of civil war: the long-term welfare effects of the Salvadoran armed conflict," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120907, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:120907
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/120907/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • I00 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - General - - - General
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:120907. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.