Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Development Consequences of Armed Conflict

  • Chapter
Violence, Statistics, and the Politics of Accounting for the Dead

Part of the book series: Demographic Transformation and Socio-Economic Development ((DTSD,volume 4))

  • 526 Accesses

Abstract

This paper conducts the first analysis of the effect of armed conflict on progress in meeting the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals. We also examine the effect of conflict on economic growth. Conflict has clear detrimental effects on the reduction of poverty and hunger, on primary education, on the reduction of child mortality, and on access to potable water. A medium-sized conflict with 2500 battle deaths is estimated to increase undernourishment an additional 3.3 %, reduce life expectancy by about 1 year, increases infant mortality by 10 %, and deprives an additional 1.8 % of the population from access to potable water.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    For definitions and sources for the variables reported here and in Fig. 2.1, see Sect. “Methodology” below.

  2. 2.

    We base these estimates on data from United Nations (2007) that give countries’ populations grouped in five-year intervals, e.g. 0–4 years, 5–9 years, etc. To calculate the population in primary school age, we add the 10–14 year population and 80 % of the 5–9 year population. For secondary school enrollment, we use 60 % of the 15–19 year population. For infant mortality, we use the population in the 0–4 year category divided by 5.

  3. 3.

    This pair of countries is found using a method called Coarsened Exact Matching (Blackwell et al. 2009). We took the list of countries with major conflict and used this method to pair each country in the conflict category with the most similar without major conflict.

  4. 4.

    See Collier et al. (2003) and Chen et al. (2008) for reviews.

  5. 5.

    See Davies (2008) for a detailed study of post-conflict capital flight.

  6. 6.

    We exclude most countries classified as industrialized in World Bank (1978): Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France , Germany , Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan , Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United State s .

  7. 7.

    The logarithm of 2,500 is 7.82, which multiplied by the parameter estimates 0.494 is 3.3 %.

  8. 8.

    The specification of the model underlying Fig. 2.1 does not allow for only a partial recovery as evident for GDP per capita in Fig. 2.2. For most of the indicators we use, we have data only for every five-year period. This precludes estimating the same type of model as the one shown in Table 2.4.

  9. 9.

    We code a dummy variable that takes on the value of 1 for a given country-year if any of that country’s neighboring countries are coded as having a civil conflict. A neighbor is defined as any country within 500 km of the country’s border.

References

  • Abouharb, M. R., & Kimball, A. L. (2007). A new dataset on infant mortality rates, 1816–2002. Journal of Peace Research, 44(6), 743–754.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ammons, L. (1996). Consequences of war on African countries’ social and economic development. African Studies Review, 39(1), 67–82.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blackwell, M., Iacus, S., King, G., & Giuseppe, P. (2009). Cem: Coarsened exact matching in Stata. The Stata Journal, 9(4), 524–546.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brück, T. (2006). War and reconstruction in Northern Mozambique. Economics of Peace and Security Journal, 1(1), 29–36.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buhaug, H., & Gates, S. (2002). The geography of civil war. Journal of Peace Research, 39(4), 417–433.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buhaug, H., & Gleditsch, K. S. (2008). Contagion or confusion? Why conflicts cluster in space. International Studies Quarterly, 52(2), 215–233.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buhaug, H., & Rød, J. K. (2006). Local determinants of African civil wars, 1970–2001. Political Geography, 25(3), 315–335.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, S., Loayza, V. N., & Reynal-Querol, M. (2008). The aftermath of civil war. The World Bank Economic Review, 22(1), 63–85.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Collier, P. (1999). On the economic consequences of civil war. Oxford Economic Papers, 51(1), 168–183.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Collier, P., & Dollar, D. (2002). Globalization, growth, and poverty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collier, P., Elliot, L., Hegre, H., Hoeffler, A., Reynal-Querol, M., & Sambanis, N. (2003). Breaking the conflict trap. Civil war and development policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Davies, V. A. B. (2008). Postwar capital flight and inflation. Journal of Peace Research, 45(4), 519–537.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davis, D. R., & Kuritsky, J. N. (2002, March). Violent conflict and its impact on health indicators in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1980 to 1997. Paper presented to the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, LA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Degomme, O., & Guha-Sapir, D. (2010). Patterns of mortality rates in Darfur conflict. The Lancet, 375(9711), 294–300.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fearon, J. D., & Laitin, D. L. (2003). Ethnicity, insurgency, and civil war. American Political Science Review, 97(1), 75–90.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gates, S., Hegre, H., Nygård, H. M., & Strand, H. (2010). Consequences of armed conflict (Background paper for the 2011 World Development Report). URL: http://wdr2011.worldbank.org/PRIO

  • Gates, S., Hegre, H., Nygård, H. M., & Strand, H. (2012). Development consequences of armed conflict. World Development, 40(9), 1713–1722.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ghobarah, H. A., Huth, P. K., & Russett, B. M. (2003). Civil wars kill and maim people – Long after the shooting stops. American Political Science Review, 97(2), 189–202.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ghobarah, H. A., Huth, P. K., & Russett, B. M. (2004). The post-war public health effects of civil conflict. Social Science and Medicine, 59(4), 869–884.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gleditsch, K. S., & Ward, M. D. (2000). War and peace in space and time: The role of democratization. International Studies Quarterly, 44(1), 1–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gleditsch, N. P., Bjerkholt, O., Cappelen, A., Smith, R. P., & Dunne, J. P. (Eds.). (1996). The peace dividend. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gleditsch, N. P., Wallensteen, P., Eriksson, M., Sollenberg, M., & Strand, H. (2002). Armed conflict 1946–2001: A new dataset. Journal of Peace Research, 39(5), 615–637.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guha-Sapir, D., & Gomez, V. T. (2006). Angola: The human impact of war – A data review of field surveys between 1999–2005. Report of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), Brussels.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harbom, L., & Wallensteen, P. (2009). Armed conflicts, 1946–2008. Journal of Peace Research, 46(4), 577–587.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hegre, H., & Sambanis, N. (2006). Sensitivity analysis of empirical results on civil war onset. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50(4), 508–535.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hegre, H., Ellingsen, T., Gates, S., & Gleditsch, N. P. (2001). Toward a democratic civil peace? Democracy, political change, and civil war, 1816–1992. American Political Science Review, 95(1), 33–48.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hegre, H., Karlsen, J., Nygård, H., M., Strand, H., & Urdal, H. (2013). Predicting armed conflict 2010–2050. International Studies Quarterly, 57(2), 250–270.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hibbs, D. A. (1973). Mass political violence. A cross-national causal analysis. New York: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Iqbal, Z. (2010). War and the health of nations. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ivanovic, D. M., Leiva, B., Hernan, T., Inzunzaa, N., Almagià, A., Toro, D. T., Soledad, M., Cervilla, J., & Bosch, E. (2000). Long-term effects of severe undernutrition during the first year of life on brain development and learning in Chilean high-school graduates. Nutrition, 16(11), 1056–1063.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • King, G., Tomz, M., & Wittenberg, J. (2000). Making the most of statistical analyses: Improving interpretation and presentation. American Journal of Political Science, 44(2), 347–361.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Knight, M., Loayza, N., & Villanueva, D. (1996). The peace dividend: Military spending cuts and economic growth (World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 1577). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=615030

  • Lacina, B., & Gleditsch, N. P. (2005). Monitoring trends in global combat: A new dataset of battle deaths. European Journal of Population, 21(2–3), 145–166.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lai, B., & Thyne, C. (2007). The effect of civil war on education. Journal of Peace Research, 44(3), 277–292.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Messer, E. M., & Cohen, M. J. (2004). Breaking the links between conflict and hunger in Africa. URL: http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/_les/publications/ib26.pdf

  • Murdoch, J. C., & Sandler, T. (2002). Economic growth, civil wars and spatial spillovers. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 46(1), 91–110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Murdoch, J. C., & Sandler, T. (2004). Civil wars and economic growth: Spatial dispersion. American Journal of Political Science, 48(1), 138–151.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Organski, A. F. K., & Kugler, J. (1980). The war ledger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Raleigh, C., Hegre, H., Karlsen, J., & Linke, A. (2010). Introducing ACLED: An armed conflict location and event dataset. Journal of Peace Research, 47(5), 651–660.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Salehyan, I., & Gleditsch, K. G. (2006). Refugees and the spread of civil war. International Organization, 60(2), 335–366.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stewart, F., Humphreys, F. P., & Lea, N. (1997). Civil conflict in developing countries over the last quarter of a century: An empirical overview of economic and social consequences. Oxford Development Studies, 25(1), 11–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • United Nations. (2007). World population prospects. The 2006 revision (Number 202). New York: United Nations.

    Google Scholar 

  • United Nations. (2009). The millennium development goals report. New York: United Nations.

    Google Scholar 

  • World Bank. (1978). World development report. Washington, DC: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

    Google Scholar 

  • World Bank. (2007). Global monitoring report 2007. Washington, DC: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The chapter is a reprint of Gates et al. (2012) with permission from Elsevier. The first paragraph of this chapter was added to the original article. The work is in turn based on a background paper written for the World Bank’s 2011 World Development Report. We especially thank Gary Milante, Sarah Cliffe, Colin Scott, and Nadia Piffaretti at the World Bank. We also thank Tilman Brück. Olaf DeGroot, Jim Fearon, Anke Hoeffler, Andy Mack, and other participants at a World Bank Brownbag Seminar, the Households in Conflict Network Workshops (in Berlin and Lisbon), a Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs workshop, the 2010 Tinbergen meetings in Amsterdam, and the 2011 meeting of the International Studies Association for their valuable comments. We thank the World Bank and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for financial support.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Peace Research Institute Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Scott Gates, Håvard Hegre, Håvard Mokleiv Nygård & Håvard Strand

  2. Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Scott Gates & Håvard Strand

  3. Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Håvard Hegre

Authors
  1. Scott Gates
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Håvard Hegre
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Håvard Mokleiv Nygård
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Håvard Strand
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Håvard Hegre .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Inst Français de Géopolitique (IFG), Université Paris 8, Saint-Denis, France

    Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos

  2. Every Casualty Programme, Oxford Research Group, London, United Kingdom

    Elizabeth Minor

  3. Centre for Study of Political Violence, Jindal School of Intern Affairs, Sonepat, Haryana, India

    Samrat Sinha

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Gates, S., Hegre, H., Nygård, H.M., Strand, H. (2016). Development Consequences of Armed Conflict. In: Pérouse de Montclos, MA., Minor, E., Sinha, S. (eds) Violence, Statistics, and the Politics of Accounting for the Dead. Demographic Transformation and Socio-Economic Development, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12036-2_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12036-2_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-12035-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-12036-2

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation