Population and Civil War

Daron Acemoglu, Leopoldo Fergusson and Simon Johnson

No 23322, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Medical and public health innovations in the 1940s quickly resulted in significant health improvements around the world. Countries with initially higher mortality from infectious diseases experienced greater increases in life expectancy, population, and - over the following 40 years - social conflict. This result is robust across alternative measures of conflict and is not driven by differential trends between countries with varying baseline characteristics. At least during this time period, a faster increase in population made social conflict more likely, probably because it increased competition for scarce resources in low income countries.

JEL-codes: J01 O11 O15 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-lab
Note: POL
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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