From missing brothers to educated sisters: The effects of victimization during the Rwandan genocide

Thomas Gautier

Open Access Publications from Kiel Institute for the World Economy from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel)

Abstract: How do civil conflicts affect female empowerment? I study the effects of household-level victimization during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda on the human capital of surviving children. Identification stems from differential mortality rates by age groups and sex. I construct a Bartik-style instrument for household-level victimization based on whether the siblings of a child are likely to be targeted during the genocide due to their demographic characteristics. Victimization leads to a large increase in schooling, especially for surviving girls relative to surviving boys. Victimization mostly takes the form of losing male siblings. These results can be explained by the impact of relief programs and by increased parental investments in the human capital of surviving children following the loss of a child. This paper underscores the role of education in empowering female survivors, highlighting that rapid reconstruction of educational infrastructure and targeted scholarship programs were essential in fostering female educational gains and mitigating the long-term impacts of victimization.

Keywords: Civil conflicts; Human capital; Family; Quantity–quality trade-off (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/318207/1/1 ... 50X25000300-main.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:zbw:ifwkie:318207

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.106945

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Open Access Publications from Kiel Institute for the World Economy from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().