The Long Shadow of Conflict on Human Capital: Intergenerational Evidence from Peru

This paper estimates the intergenerational impacts of mothers’ exposure to the 1980-2000 Peruvian civil conflict on their children’s socio-emotional skills development. We combine longitudinal data, which measures skills across a child’s life, with historical geo-located conflict data. Exploiting spatial and temporal variation in conflict episodes, we find that mothers’ exposure to conflict has adverse intergenerational effects on their children’s socio-emotional outcomes of agency and pride. These effects are present at ages 8 and 12 and are robust to alternative specifications. At age 15, mothers’ conflict exposure increases children’s propensity to engage in crime-related risky behaviour. The analysis of mechanisms highlights the role of reduced parental investments in children, driven by constrained household resources, a quality-quantity trade-off, and diminished maternal empowerment. Finally, an examination of the mother’s migration history reveals that migration decisions of her parents during the conflict partially mitigated the adverse effects on the socio-emotional development of their grandchildren.