An Overview

Mayra Buvinic, Director PREMGEMonica Das Gupta, DECRG

Ursula Casabonne, PREMGEThe World Bank

Gender-differentiated impacts of violent conflict

PREMGE – DECRG research program

• Earlier work on gender, poverty and demography:

• The impact of demographic conditions on poverty • How gender inequalities exacerbate this impact

• Current work is on the gender-disaggregated impact of violent conflict

Conflicts can be self-renewing, livelihood support can help break the cycle

• High proportion of conflicts today are internal conflicts in poor developing countries

• Collier and others find:– Economically vulnerable nations more likely to experience

conflict– Conflicts destroy physical and human capital, disrupt

economies, “development in reverse”– “Conflict trap”: conflicts intensify economic vulnerability, so

chances of renewed conflict much higher in first 5 years after conflict.

Large gender differentials in the impact of conflict

• Males are subject to far higher excess mortality, injuries, and disability

• especially young adult males, so labor force heavily impacted

• Females also highly impacted:– Sexual violence– Left to cope with raising children and caring for the old, often in the

face of:• Breakdown of economy, administration, service delivery• Breakdown of civil and social infrastructure• Rise in sick, maimed, and traumatized family members• Possible loss of household assets• Possible displacement from home

Adult men more likely to be killed in conflict

Germany, 1950 Cambodia, 1980

Source: Authors’ analysis based on data from United Nations Population Division (2006).

Source Blattman, C. & Annan, J. (2007), ‘The consequences of child soldiering’. Households in Conflict Network Working Paper, 22

Educational attainment lost and labor market effects of child soldiers is substantial: Abducted youth attain 0.78 fewer years of education than non-abducted youth, which implies an 11% reduction in education attainment.

Boys’ lifetime prospects can be affected by child soldiering

Women have to cope under very challenging conditions

• Males are subject to far higher excess mortality, injuries, and disability

• especially young adult males, so labor force heavily impacted

• Females also highly impacted:– Sexual violence– Left to cope with raising children and caring for the old, often in the

face of:• Breakdown of economy, administration, service delivery• Breakdown of civil and social infrastructure• Rise in sick, maimed, and traumatized family members• Possible loss of household assets• Possible displacement from home

PREMGE / DECRG work on the gender-differentiated impact of conflict

• To add rigorous studies of the gender-disaggregated impact of violent conflict on:

• human capital• marriage and fertility • labor force participation and economic empowerment

• There is little existing work in this area, and it is also often not gender-disaggregated

There are few rigorous studies on the micro-level impacts of violent conflict due to data constraints

• Large-scale, high quality household surveys often not available for countries affected by violent conflict.

• Where surveys available, methodological issues:― often difficult to attribute causality ― selective nature of respondents: non-random attrition

due to mortality, migration or displacement

• But recent work is finding innovative ways to resolve some of these issues

Emerging Evidence

Effects on human capital

• Affects child health • higher mortality

• poorer growth

• Child schooling suffers

Child mortality can rise

Source: Humberto, Lopez and Quentin Wodon, 2005. The Economic Impact of Armed Conflict in Rwanda, Journal of African Economies 14 (4): 586-602

Impact of the Genocide on Child Mortality in Rwanda

Surviving children can have poorer growth outcomes

Sources: Guerrero-Serdán, Gabriela. 2009. “The Effects of the War in Iraq on Nutrition and Health: An Analysis Using Anthropometric Outcomes of Children” HiCN Working Paper 55; Bundervoet, Tom, Philip Verwimp, and Richard Akresh, 2009. “Health and Civil War in Rural in Burundi,” Journal of Human Resources 44(2): 536–563.; Akresh, Richard, Philip Verwimp, and Tom Bundervoet, 2007. “Civil War, Crop Failure and Child Stunting in Rwanda,” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 4208.

The effect is between -0.22 to -0.48.

Children’s schooling can suffer(sometimes more for girls)

Sources: Chamarbagwala, Rubiana, and Hilcías E. Morán. 2008. “The Human Capital Consequences of Civil War: Evidence from Guatemala” HiCN Working Paper 59; Shemyakina, Olga, 2006. “The effect of armed conflict on accumulation of schooling: results from Tajikistan”. Households in Conflict Network Working Paper 12

Effects on marriage and fertility

Disruptions of conflict can lead to: • Postponement of marriage

• Postponed childbearing even if married

• Rebound in fertility after the conflict

Shortage of men due to their higher mortality in conflict can lead to:• High rates of non-marriage of women

• Increase in short-term consensual unions as male bargaining power higher

• Out-migration of single women to places with better opportunities

Effects on household economy

• Household economy disrupted:• Loss of assets (destruction, looting, distress sale)

• Loss of working age men, rise in maimed

• Displacement from home

• Breakdowns in administration, services, infrastructure

• Shift to subsistence farming (in agrarian settings)• Found to help maintain child nutrition indicators despite falling income

• Women take on role of breadwinner. Some options:• Home-based work (subsistence farming, crafts with established market such as

carpet-weaving in Afghanistan)

• New entrepreneurship providing services locally (e.g. tailoring)

• Training in new skills geared to meet existing demand / markets

• Attempts to build entrepreneurship in unestablished channels less likely to succeed under all the additional constraints of post-conflict life