Consumption Growth, Household Splits and Civil War

Philip Verwimp and Tom Bundervoet

No 2008_023, Working Papers ECARES from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: We analyse the effect of civil war on household welfare. Using Burundian panel data for the 1998-2007 period in which we re-interviewed original as well as newly formed households (split-offs), we show that headcount poverty decreased by 3.5 % points when split-off households are taken into account and 1% when splits are left out. Poverty is persistent while prosperity is not, in particular in war-affected areas. We find that 25 war-related deaths or wounded at the village level reduce consumption growth by 13%. We also find that violence afflicted on household members decreases growth whereas membership of rebel groups increases it. Apart from such war-related effects - and controlling for initial levels of consumption - we find that temporarily famine-induced migration and illness decrease growth while good harvests, more split-offs and higher initial levels of education increase it. Good harvests are found to have persistent positive effects on growth. Our results are robust for different household and province fixed effects specifications.

Keywords: consumption; growth; split-off households; civil war; panel data; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 I32 N47 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 p.
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published by:

Downloads: (external link)
https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/5408 ... _wpaper_2008_023.pdf RePEc_eca_wpaper_2008_023 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Consumption Growth, Household Splits and Civil War (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eca:wpaper:2008_023

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://hdl.handle.ne ... ulb.ac.be:2013/54085

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers ECARES from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benoit Pauwels ().