War during Childhood: The Long Run Effects of Warfare on Health

Akbulut-Yuksel, Mevlude

War during Childhood: The Long Run Effects of Warfare on Health

No 10807, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper estimates the causal long-term consequences of an exposure to war in utero and during childhood on the risk of obesity and the probability of having a chronic health condition in adulthood. Using the plausibly exogenous city-by-cohort variation in the intensity of WWII destruction as a unique quasi-experiment, I find that individuals who were exposed to WWII destruction during the prenatal and early postnatal periods have higher BMIs and are more likely to be obese as adults. I also find an elevated incidence of chronic health conditions such as stroke, hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disorder in adulthood among these wartime children.

Keywords: warfare; body size; health conditions; children (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I12 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2017-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (63)

Published - published in: Journal of Health Economics, 2017, 53, 117–130.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10807.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: War during childhood: The long run effects of warfare on health (2017)
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:iza:izadps:dp10807

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().