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. 2022 Oct 10;16(1):52.
doi: 10.1186/s13031-022-00483-9.

Exposure to conflict and child health outcomes: evidence from a large multi-country study

Srinivas Goli  1   2 , Astghik Mavisakalyan  3 , Anu Rammohan  4 , Loan Vu  3
Affiliations

Exposure to conflict and child health outcomes: evidence from a large multi-country study

Srinivas Goli et al. Confl Health. .

Abstract

Background: Previous research has consistently found evidence of poor health outcomes among children living in conflict areas. However, the methodological focus of these studies has largely been on case studies, chart or registry reviews, qualitative studies, and single country studies. This reflects the need for a comprehensive multi-country analysis of the associations between conflicts and child health over a longer period. This study analyses the adverse impact of exposure to different types of conflicts from in utero to five years of age, on several child health measures across a large group of countries. Our analysis pools data from multiple countries and time-points, to provide robust evidence on the relationship between conflict and child health.

Methods: Geo-referenced data on various forms of conflict are combined with the Demographic Health Survey dataset, to construct a large unique database of 590,488 pre-school age children across 52 developing countries over the period 1997 to 2018. Our analysis exploits the within-country differences in children's exposure to conflict from in utero to age five, to estimate its association with health outcomes. Our multivariate regression models estimate the links between conflict exposure and child health outcomes, measured using child nutrition outcomes (height-for-age and weight-for-age z-scores) and immunization status.

Results and conclusions: Empirical estimates show that even after controlling for a large array of socio-economic and demographic characteristics and location fixed effects, conflict exposure is negatively associated with child nutrition and immunization, across all our measures of conflict. These findings are robust across a range of specifications, alternative measures of conflict and sub-samples.

Keywords: Child nutrition; Conflict; Immunization; Multi-country analysis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Conflict and health: mechanisms
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Sample of 52 countries by number of conflict events taking place between 1997 and 2018
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Stunting and underweight probability-marginal effects. Notes: Dependent variables: HAZ < − 2 and WAZ < − 2. Marginal effects of the conflict variables from Probit models are plotted
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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