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Children of War: Conflict and Child Welfare in Iraq

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  • Reham Rizk

    (Universities of Canada in Egypt)

  • Colette Salemi

    (University of Minnesota)

Abstract

What are the impacts of violent conflict on child health and nutrition? In this paper, we examine conflict events from 2013 to 2018 in Iraq. We match household microdata from the 2018 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey with conflict event data derived from the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDLET) to estimate the number of conflicts a child age 0-4 in the MICS data was exposed to during her lifetime. To account for endogenous conflict event locations, we use a two-stage least squares estimation approach in which governorate distance to the Syrian border serves as our instrument. Our results suggest that a 1% increase in conflict frequency results in a significant reduction in height-for-age z-scores of -0.15. We repeat our estimates using alternative conflict data as a robustness check, and the sign and significance of the result holds, though these alternative estimates are smaller in magnitude. Our mechanism analysis suggests that more exposed children were statistically less likely to have been breastfed.

Suggested Citation

  • Reham Rizk & Colette Salemi, 2020. "Children of War: Conflict and Child Welfare in Iraq," Working Papers 1439, Economic Research Forum, revised 20 Dec 2020.
    • Handle: RePEc:erg:wpaper:1439
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