Exposure to armed conflict, climate shocks, and the nutritional status of women and children

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PROJECT SUMMARY This project will study how exposure to armed conflict affects the nutritional status of women and children in sub-Saharan Africa. I link nutritional data on 725,619 women and 484,546 children from 35 sub-Saharan African countries to conflict records during physiologically relevant critical periods. I then measure the effects of conflict exposures on the weight-for-height of children ages 0-23 months, the height-for-age of children ages 24-59 months, and the body mass index of women ages 15-49 years, while controlling for relevant demographic characteristics and spatio-temporal confounders. I extend overall estimates of conflict effects by testing for heterogeneity across social groups and between countries, evaluating whether concurrent climate shocks amplify the effects of conflict, and empirically examining the role of agricultural, economic, health, and familial mechanisms. I then examine potential selection effects by measuring conflict and climate effects on fertility and child mortality. The analyses also include a series of supplementary analyses and robustness checks, such as analyses of adult male body mass index, tests for non-linearities in conflict and climate effects, and assessments of data quality. This study provides new cross-national evidence about the nutritional effects of conflict in Africa, fills evidence gaps about acute malnutrition in conflict settings, and integrates the emerging literatures on the health effects of conflict and climate. The results will inform debates about nutritional security in a period of widespread conflict and growing climatic variability.