Civil War-Induced Displacement and Human Capital

We study the impact of conflict-driven displacement on human capital and occupational shifts, focusing on the Mozambican civil war (1977 - 1992), during which millions of civilians were forcibly displaced to the countryside, cities, and neighboring countries. Reconstructing the movements of the entire population during the civil war, we examine the consequences of multiple displacement trajectories within a unified framework. First, we characterize the education and sectoral employment of the universe of (non)displaced. Second, we exploit variation in displacement experiences among extended kin members during their school-going years to account for shared household characteristics. Displacement is associated with significant gains in education. Third, employing a “movers design,” we show that minors displaced earlier to better districts experienced an increase in educational attainment. Focusing on moves during the intensification of the war and when comparing members of the same household, regional childhood exposure effects remain strong, whereas spatial sorting vanishes. Fourth, we jointly estimate place-based, spatial sorting, and uprootedness effects, showing that all forces are at play. Fifth, a small survey in Mozambique’s largest north- ern city reveals long-term effects: internally displaced report higher education than their siblings who stayed behind, but lower social capital and worse mental health relative to locals. Our findings demonstrate that displacement shocks can foster human capital accumulation, even in very low-income settings, albeit at the cost of enduring social and psychological traumas.