War and Starture Growing Up During the Nigerian Civil War.pdf

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IZA DP No. 6194
PAPER
War and Stature:
Growing Up During the Nigerian Civil War
Richard Akresh
Sonia Bhalotra
Marinella Leone
Una Osili
December 2011
DISCUSSION
Forschungsinstitut
zur Zukunft der Arbeit
Institute for the Study
of Labor
War and Stature:
Growing Up During the Nigerian Civil War
Richard Akresh
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and IZA
Sonia Bhalotra
University of Bristol and IZA
Marinella Leone
University of Sussex
Una Osili
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Discussion Paper No. 6194
December 2011
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IZA Discussion Paper No. 6194
December 2011
ABSTRACT
War and Stature: Growing Up During the Nigerian Civil War
*
The Nigerian civil war of 1967-70 was precipitated by secession of the Igbo-dominated south-
eastern region to create the state of Biafra. It was the first civil war in Africa, the predecessor
of many. We investigate the legacies of this war four decades later. Using variation across
ethnicity and cohort, we identify significant long run impacts on human health capital.
Individuals exposed to the war at all ages between birth and adolescence exhibit reduced
adult stature and these impacts are largest in adolescence. Adult stature is portentous of
reduced life expectancy and lower earnings.
JEL Classification:
Keywords:
I12, O12, J13
war, height, early life, human capital investments, Nigeria
Corresponding author:
Sonia Bhalotra
Department of Economics
University of Bristol
8 Woodland Road
Bristol BS8 1TN
United Kingdom
E-mail:
s.bhalotra@bristol.ac.uk
*
We are grateful to Jorge Aguero and Alexander Moradi for helpful discussions.
War and Stature: Growing Up During the Nigerian Civil War
Richard Akresh, Sonia Bhalotra, Marinella Leone, and Una Okonkwo Osili
1. Introduction
The Nigerian civil war was the first modern war in sub-Saharan Africa after
independence and one of the bloodiest. It raged in Biafra, the secessionist region in the
South-East of Nigeria from 6 July 1967 to 15 January 1970, killing between 1 and 3 million
people and causing widespread malnutrition and devastation. We investigate the impact of
exposure to the war as reflected in adult height, a latent stock measure of health. A number of
studies establish adult height as a marker of the nutritional environment in early childhood,
and environmentally determined variation in height predicts longevity, education, earnings,
and the health of the next generation (Steckel 1995, Strauss and Thomas 1998, Schultz 2002,
Case and Paxson 2008, 2010, Bhalotra and Rawlings 2010).
We estimate a difference-in-differences model, interacting an indicator for war
exposed ethnicity with a continuous cohort-based measure of months of exposure to the war.
We find that the full consequences of this war are still being realized, some thirty to forty
years later. Despite massive survival selection and substantial flows of foreign aid, the war
left scars familiar from studies of famine and epidemic disease. Individuals exposed to the
war as children and adolescents, who are still alive today, exhibit reduced stature. A striking
finding is that the impact of war exposure in adolescence is stronger than at younger ages.
We discuss the reasons for and the implications of this.
This paper contributes to an emerging literature on the legacies of war in producing
evidence of its long run human capital costs. Estimates of the costs of war are pertinent given
the increase in the incidence of conflict in the decades following the Biafran war. Civil war
has afflicted a third of all nations in the past half century. This paper is related to a growing
2 
 
body of work on the long run impacts of fetal and childhood shocks (Almond and Currie
2011) and critical periods for investments in children (Cunha and Heckman 2007). We depart
from previous studies in allowing for the fact that height experiences a second growth spurt
during adolescence. Recent studies in economics recognize that adolescence may be a critical
period in height formation (Schultz 2002, Case and Paxson 2008) but there is limited (causal)
evidence of the consequences of nutritional deprivation at this age.
2. Data and Methodology
The Nigerian Demographic and Health Surveys (NDHS) are large nationally representative
cross-sections with information for women aged 15 to 49 at the date of the survey. Heights
are measured by trained surveyors, producing more reliable data than from self-reported
measures of the stock of health. We use the most recent survey rounds of 2003 and 2008,
which allow us to include cohorts who were adolescents during the war (the oldest cohort in
the sample was born in 1954). We restrict the estimation sample to birth cohorts 1954-1974.
We note that the sample only includes women who survived the war and this will tend to lead
us to under-estimate its impact. The main estimated equation is
height
imcesr
=
β
a
war
mce
+
α
c
+
δ
a
m
mc
+
θ
e
+
λ
s
+µ
r
+
γ
e
.t + u
imces
.
The subscripts
i, m, c, e, s
and
r
index an individual
woman
i
of birth month
m
and birth year
c
of ethnicity
e
born in state
s
whose height is
measured in round
r.
The main variable of interest,
war
mce
is specified as the interaction term,
(war-exposed ethnicity)
e
*(months of war exposure)
mc
. The equation includes fixed effects for
ethnicity,
θ
e
,
and birth year,
α
c
,
and it additionally includes (un-interacted) months of war
exposure (m
mc
). We control for ethnicity-specific linear trends,
γ
e
.t,
to allow for any
underlying divergence or convergence in height across ethnic groups. Although there is a
strong overlap of ethnicity and state, they are not identical, so we also include state fixed
effects,
λ
s
.
Survey round fixed effects,
µ
r
, are included to allow, for instance, for any lifecycle
changes across cohort.
3 
 

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