School Fees and Rebel Demobilization: Evidence from Uganda

The government of Uganda eliminated primary school fees during the insurgency of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group notorious for abducting school aged boys and girls to turn them into rebels through indoctrination and intimidation. Previous research shows that the no-fee policy, commonly known as the Universal Primary Education (UPE) programme, increases access to education mainly for girls. I test the hypothesis that UPE increases incentives of abducted girls to desert the LRA. Difference-in-differences estimates, which compare the change in desertion of girls in primary school age (treatment group) to the change of older females (control group), support the hypothesis. Investigating possible mechanisms, I find little support for the ‘standard’ opportunity cost hypothesis that dominates the literature, where education increases earning opportunities in the regular economy and thus makes staying with the rebels less attractive. Instead, the evidence supports a ‘novel’ opportunity cost hypothesis that has received little attention thus far: Girls long for education, and the prospect of going to school – which UPE increases substantially – entices them to abandon the rebels.