Working Paper: NBER ID: w29589
Authors: Giorgio Chiovelli; Stelios Michalopoulos; Elias Papaioannou; Sandra Sequeira
Abstract: We examine the impact of conflict-driven displacement on human capital. We focus on the Mozambican civil war (1977–1992), during which more than four million civilians fled to the countryside, cities, and refugee camps and settlements in neighboring countries. We leverage the full post-war census to compare siblings separated during the war, using those who stayed behind as a counterfactual to one’s displacement path. Uprooted children register higher investments in education. Second, we quantify the relative importance of place-based and displacement effects. The latter increases education and decreases attachment to agriculture by the same rate as being exposed to an environment approximately one standard deviation more developed than one’s birthplace. Third, we conduct a survey in Nampula, whose population doubled during the civil war. Those who fled to the city have significantly higher education than their siblings who remained in the countryside and they converged to the levels of schooling of non-mover urban-born individuals. However, those displaced exhibit significantly lower social/civic capital and have worse mental health, even three decades after the war. These findings reveal that displacement shocks can trigger human capital investments, breaking links with subsistence agriculture, but at the cost of long-lasting, social, and psychological traumas.
Keywords: forced displacement; human capital; Mozambican civil war; educational investments; sectoral employment
JEL Codes: J10; J15; J20; O1; O15; O18
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| displacement (J63) | educational attainment (I21) |
| displacement to urban areas (R23) | educational attainment (I21) |
| displacement (J63) | attachment to agriculture (Q15) |
| displacement to better-developed areas (R23) | educational investments (I26) |
| displacement (J63) | social-civic capital (Z13) |
| displacement (J63) | mental health outcomes (I12) |