Forced displacement and behavioral change: An empirical study of returnee households in the Nuba Mountains

Asha Abdel Rahim (), Dany Jaimovich and Aleksi Yl�nen ()
Additional contact information
Asha Abdel Rahim: University of Juba
Aleksi Yl�nen: Peace Research Institute Frankfurt

No 157, HiCN Working Papers from Households in Conflict Network

Abstract: After the end of a civil war that lasted for more than two decades, in 2005 hundreds of thousands of displaced people started returning to their communities of origin in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. We use unique data gathered shortly after the end of the conflict in eight villages to describe the characteristics of the returnees vis-a-vis those of non-displaced households. We find important differences between them. Returned households have fewer assets than those who stayed during the conflict and are less involved in the production of cash crops. Even though returnees seem to face worse economic conditions, we find evidence that they tend to perform better on different health indicators, including a lower probability of disease-related mortality in their families. We explore the hypothesis that behavioral changes related to the experiences during displacement can explain the latter result. In particular, we use a detailed set of variables related to hygiene and sanitary habits and show that returnees are more likely to adopt these measures. We further attempt to provide causal evidence of this hypothesis using instrumental variable estimations as a way to deal with the potential bias induced by self-selection into displacement and return.

Keywords: Forced displacement; behavioral change; conflict; Nuba Mountains; Sudan; Africa. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O12 O15 O55 Q15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2013-10
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 (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hicn.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/HiCN-WP-157_1.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Forced displacement and behavioral change: an empirical study of returnee households in the Nuba Mountains (2018)
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:hic:wpaper:157

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in HiCN Working Papers from Households in Conflict Network
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tilman Brück () and () and () and ().