The Impact of Armed Conflicts on Child Health in the Central African Republic
Date
2023
Authors
Tchakounte, Dimitri
Loic, Molambo Sambi
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
African Economic Research Consortium
Abstract
For several decades, the Central African Republic (CAR) has been the scene of
a succession of coups that have been accompanied by armed conflicts in many
prefectures of the country. Children often suffer high rates of acute malnutrition
during these armed conflicts. This study aims to analyse the impact of the 2003-2008
and 2012-2014 armed conflicts on child health using data from the 2010 and 2018
Multiple Cluster Surveys of the Central African Republic. Our identification strategy
relies on exploiting both temporal and spatial variation across birth and prefectures
cohorts to measure child exposure to the conflicts. From the difference-in-difference
estimation, we find that height-for-age Z-scores and weight-for-age Z-scores are,
respectively, 0.518 and 0.242 standard deviations lower for children born during
the war. We also examine the impact of the total duration of exposure to conflicts,
and the results indicate that an additional month of exposure significantly reduces
both height-for-age and weight-for-age z-scores. We further perform robustness
analysis, and the findings suggest that the effects are robust to considering the
level of internally displaced persons across prefectures and the level of household
wealth. As economic losses appear to be the most relevant mechanisms paired
with the decline in child nutritional health in the CAR, interventions must promote
agricultural empowerment of internally displaced persons, and initiate cash transfers
and employment programmes aimed at rebuilding household assets in the absence
of agricultural income. Moreover, rehabilitating basic social services, especially health
infrastructure, can help alleviate the negative effects of conflict on child health through
access to adequate health care during illness.
Description
Keywords
Armed conflict; child health; height-for-age; weight-for-age; Central African Republic.