The Scar of Civil War Exposure in (Early) Childhood and School Test Scores as a Teenager

This paper investigates the effect of civil war exposure in (early) childhood on school test scores as a teenager. It uses tests scores from the Concours National in Burundi, a nationwide competitive exam taken at the end of primary school, consisting of four academic disciplines for the period 2010-2012. These data are combined with exposure to civil war at different stages in childhood. The paper finds that an average duration of war exposure from in utero to age 12 (4.3 years) increases the age at which the test is taken with 1.72 years and causes a drop in the test score of 5.5 points on average (which is about 5% of the average grade), of which 1.75 points can be attributed to the scarring effect of war exposure and 3.75 points to the cognitive effect. The effects vary according to the timing of the shocks in childhood and along the distribution of test scores. Boys suffer more from the scarring effect, obtaining significantly lower test scores than girls from taking the exam at a later age, whereas girls suffer more from the cognitive effect of war shocks, conditional on age-at-test. Girl’s performance is more affected than boys for mathematics but not more for languages. The paper finds evidence for a sex-specific selection mechanism in utero.