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We combine household survey data with event data on the timing and location of armed conflicts to examine the impact of Burundi's civil war on children's health status. The identification strategy exploits exogenous variation in the war's timing across provinces and the exposure of children's birth cohorts to the fighting. After controlling for province of residence, birth cohort, individual and household characteristics, and province-specific time trends, we find that children exposed to the war have on average 0.515 standard deviations lower height-for-age z-scores than non-exposed children. This negative effect is robust to specifications exploiting alternative sources of exogenous variation.

We investigate the relationship between exposure to conflict and poverty dynamics over time, using original three-waves panel data for Burundi which tracked individuals and reported local-level violence exposure from 1998 to 2012. Firstly, the data reveal that headcount poverty has not changed since 1998 while we observe multiple transitions into and out of poverty. Moreover, households exposed to the war exhibit a lower level of welfare than non-exposed households, with the difference between the two groups predicted to remain significant at least until 2017, i.e. twelve years after the conflict termination. The correlation between violence exposure and deprivation over time is confirmed in a household-level panel setting. Secondly, our empirical investigation shows how violence exposure over different time spans interacts with households' subsequent welfare. Our analysis of the determinants of households' likelihood to switch poverty status (i.e. to fall into poverty or escape poverty) combined with quantile regressions suggest that, (i) exposure during the first phase of the conflict has affected the entire distribution, and (ii) exposure during the second phase of the conflict has mostly affected the upper tail of the distribution: initially non-poor households have a higher propensity to fall into poverty while initially poor households see their propensity to pull through only slightly decrease with recent exposure to violence. Although not directly testable with the data at hand, these results are consistent with the changing nature of violence in the course of the Burundi civil war, from relatively more labour-destructive to relatively more capital-destructive. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This paper reviews both current practices and common challenges of measuring the causes, functioning, and consequences of violent conflict at the micro-level. The authors review existing conflict -- and violence-related survey questionnaires, with a particular focus on the World Bank's Living Standard Measurement Surveys. Further, they discuss methodological challenges associated with empirical work in conflict-affected areas—such as operationalizing a definition of conflict, using the appropriate units of analysis, deciding on the timing of the survey, dealing with data biases and conducting surveys in an ethically sound manner—and propose ways to improve the usefulness of existing surveys to analyze conflict processes at the micro-level. Violent conflict, households, survey methods, questionnaire design.

Violent conflict, a pervasive feature of the recent global landscape, has lasting impacts on human capital, and these impacts are seldom gender neutral. Death and destruction alter the structure and dynamics of households, including their demographic profiles and traditional gender roles. To date, attention to the gender impacts of conflict has focused almost exclusively on sexual and gender-based violence. We show that a far wider set of gender issues must be considered to better document the human consequences of war and to design effective postconflict policies. The emerging empirical evidence is organized using a framework that identifies both the differential impacts of violent conflict on males and females (first-round impacts) and the role of gender inequality in framing adaptive responses to conflict (second-round impacts). War's mortality burden is disproportionately borne by males, whereas women and children constitute a majority of refugees and the displaced. Indirect war impacts on health are more equally distributed between the genders. Conflicts create households headed by widows who can be especially vulnerable to intergenerational poverty. Second-round impacts can provide opportunities for women in work and politics triggered by the absence of men. Households adapt to conflict with changes in marriage and fertility, migration, investments in children's health and schooling, and the distribution of labor between the genders. The impacts of conflict are heterogeneous and can either increase or decrease preexisting gender inequalities. Describing these gender differential effects is a first step toward developing evidence-based conflict prevention and postconflict policy.

Violent conflict, a pervasive feature of the recent global landscape, has lasting impacts on human capital, and these impacts are seldom gender neutral. Death and destruction alter the structure and dynamics of households, including their demographic profiles and traditional gender roles. To date, attention to the gender impacts of conflict has focused almost exclusively on sexual and gender-based violence. We show that a far wider set of gender issues must be considered to better document the human consequences of war and to design effective postconflict policies. The emerging empirical evidence is organized using a framework that identifies both the differential impacts of violent conflict on males and females (first-round impacts) and the role of gender inequality in framing adaptive responses to conflict (second-round impacts). War's mortality burden is disproportionately borne by males, whereas women and children constitute a majority of refugees and the displaced. Indirect war impacts on health are more equally distributed between the genders. Conflicts create households headed by widows who can be especially vulnerable to intergenerational poverty. Second-round impacts can provide opportunities for women in work and politics triggered by the absence of men. Households adapt to conflict with changes in marriage and fertility, migration, investments in children's health and schooling, and the distribution of labor between the genders. The impacts of conflict are heterogeneous and can either increase or decrease preexisting gender inequalities. Describing these gender differential effects is a first step toward developing evidence-based conflict prevention and postconflict policy. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

The overall goal of the report is to increase the capacity of researchers and policy makers to identify comparatively, and across time, how individuals, households and communities are affected by violent conflict. The report provides an extensive overview of existing practices and datasets used in this field of research. We investigate existing methodologies and data-bases used to operationalize the variables of interest and discuss the channels linking violent conflict to individual and household welfare. Special attention is paid to methodological issues on how to design a module and operationalize variables that allow researchers to analyze the welfare effects of violent conflict across countries and across time. We develop and discuss a generic household module that can be easily inserted into future socio-economic surveys implemented in conflict-affected countries. This module will enable researchers to address specific violence-related issues comparatively across different conflict settings and systematically across time. The module proposed builds on previous experiences on survey designs in conflict-affected areas. We review existing conflict- and violence-related questionnaires, with a special focus on World Bank's Living Standard Measurement Surveys (LSMS), and propose suggestions on how to improve questionnaires in order to deepen the understanding of the nature of violent conflict and the channels whereby conflict and violence affect the welfare characteristics and choices of individuals and households in conflict areas.

Brück, T. ; Naudé, W. ; Verwimp, P.: Business under fire: entrepreneurship and violent conflict in developing countries. - S. 3-19 -- Desai, S. ; Acs, Z. J. ; Weitzel, U.: A model of destructive entrepreneurship: insight for conflict and postconflict recovery. - S. 20-40 -- Sanders, M. ; Weitzel, U.: Misallocation of entrepreneurial talent in postconflict environments. - S. 41-64 -- Collier, P. ; Duponchel, M.: The economic legacy of civil war: firm-level evidence from Sierra Leone. - S. 65-88 -- Camacho, A. ; Rodriguez, C.: Firm exit and armed conflict in Colombia. - S. 89-116 -- Bozzoli, C. ; Brück, T. ; Wald, N.: Self-employament and conflict in Colombia. - S. 117-142 -- Singh, P.: Impact of terrorism on investment decisions of farmers: evidence from the Punjab insurgency. - S. 143-168

We use a series of field experiments in rural Burundi to examine the impact of exposure to conflict on social, risk, and time preferences. We find that conflict affects behavior: individuals exposed to violence display more altruistic behavior towards their neighbors, are more risk-seeking, and have higher discount rates. Large adverse shocks can thus alter savings and investments decisions, and potentially have long-run consequences—even if the shocks themselves are temporary. (JEL C93, D12, D74, 012, 017, 018)