Working Papers
Violent Conflict and Vaccinations: Evidence from Iraq
No.
1438
Publisher
ERF
Date
December, 2020
Topic
N4. Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation
F5. International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy
I1. Health
J1. Demographic Economics
Using a generalized difference-in-differences approach, we find that children residing in high conflict areas in Iraq are more likely to be vaccinated against tuberculosis and measles than children residing in low-conflict areas. We draw household data on vaccination from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys and we identify high-conflict area-years using geolocational conflict data from the Iraq Body Count project. While previous literature generally finds that conflict harms public health, a potential explanation for our result is heavy presence of international aid organizations in conflict areas, a phenomenon which researchers have noted in other contexts.
Research Fellows
Georges Naufal
Associate Research Scientist, Public Policy Research Institute,...
Authors
Michael Malcolm
Associate Professor of economics at West Chester...
Authors
Vidya Diwakar
Researcher in the Chronic Poverty Advisory NetworK