Violence exposure and deprivation: Evidence from the Burundi civil war

We investigate the relationship between exposure to con ict and household deprivation, using original three-wave household-level panel data for Burundi which report local-level violence exposure. First, the data reveal that aggregate poverty has not changed between 1998 and 2012, while food poverty has increased and we observe multiple household-level transitions into and out of poverty. Second, households living in localities exposed to the war since 1993 subsequently exhibit a signi cantly higher level of deprivation than non-exposed households, this di erence being persistent years after the con ict termination. Moreover, the correlation between violence and household deprivation is robust to within-household estimations. Third, the analysis of the household-level poverty dynamics following the most recent period of violence reveals that the likelihood to pull through of poor households is hampered by exposure to high-intensity violence, while the risk to fall into poverty of non-poor households is ampli ed by exposure to low-intensity violence. We discuss a mechanism based on the nature of violence which could explain this result, and derive some policy implications regarding poverty alleviation in the aftermath of civil wars.