The Impact of Armed Conflicts on Child Health in the Central African Republic

For several decades, the Central African Republic has been the scene of a succession of coups which have been accompanied by armed conflicts in many prefectures of the country. However, children suffer high rates of acute malnutrition during these armed conflicts. This study aims to analyze the impact of the 2003-2008 and 2012-2014 armed conflicts on child health using data from the 2010 and 2018 Multiple Cluster Surveys of the Central African Republic. Our identification strategy relies on exploiting both temporal and spatial variation across birth and prefectures cohorts to measure child exposure to the conflicts. POLICY BRIEF The Impact of Armed Conflicts on Child Health in the Central African Republic Dimitri Tchakounte and Molambo Sambi Loic October 2023 / No.803 2 Policy Brief No.803 From the difference-in-difference estimation, we find that height-for-age Z-scores and weight-for-age Z-scores are respectively 0.518 and 0.242 standard deviations lower for children born during the war. We also examine the impact of the total duration of exposure to conflicts, and the results indicate that an additional month of exposure significantly reduces both height-for-age and weight-for-age z-scores. We further perform robustness analysis, and the findings suggest that effects are robust to considering the level of internally displaced person across prefectures and the level of household wealth. As economic losses appear to be the most relevant mechanism paired with the decline in child nutritional health in the CAR, interventions must promote agricultural empowerment of internal displaced persons, initiate cash transfers and employment programs aimed at rebuilding household assets in the absence of agricultural income. Moreover, rehabilitating basic social services, especially health infrastructures, can help alleviate the negative effects of conflicts on child health through the access to adequate health care during illness.