Medication against conflict

Andrea Berlanda, Matteo Cervellati, Elena Esposito, Dominic Rohner and Uwe Sunde

Journal of Development Economics, 2024, vol. 170, issue C

Abstract: Adverse health conditions and social conflict constitute major impediments for developing countries. The potential for reducing social conflict by successful public health interventions is largely unknown. This paper closes this gap by evaluating the effect of a major health intervention—the successful expansion of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa. Combining exogenous time variation in access to ART with cross-sectional variation in the scope for treatment for identification, we find that the ART expansion significantly reduced the number of violent events in African countries and sub-national regions. The effect pertains to social conflict, not civil war. The evidence also shows that the effect is related to health improvements, greater approval of government policy, and increased trust in political institutions. Results of a counterfactual simulation reveal that the ART expansion reduced the number of social conflict events by about 10%.

Keywords: HIV; Conflict; Social conflict; ART expansion; Trust; Africa; Health intervention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 I15 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387824000555
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Medication against Conflict (2022)
Working Paper: Medication Against Conflict (2022)
Working Paper: Medication Against Conflict (2022)
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:eee:deveco:v:170:y:2024:i:c:s0304387824000555

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2024.103306

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().