Among the sub-Saharan African countries, Ivory
Coast has suffered more than 10 years of political instability
and absence of peace. Using nationally representative
household surveys, this study exploits temporal and geographical
variations of the 1999–2011 Ivorian political
instability to identify its causal effect on children’s
schooling and child mortality. The results showed that
individuals who lived in conflict areas and who reached the
official age to be enrolled in school within the period of the
instability had a 10 % lower probability of being enrolled
in school. Students who spent their school years during the
conflict and who lived in an affected area experienced a lag
in schooling attainment of more than a year. Older students
or those who were likely to be in high school during the
conflict underwent a loss in schooling attainment of nearly
2 years. In addition, results showed that the Ivorian armed
conflict increased the mortality of children under age five
by at least 3 %. My results also suggest that the deterioration
of living conditions and the limitation of health
service use during the conflict contributed to the
explaination of these adverse effects. Placebo tests suggested
that the results were not driven by preexisting differences
across conflict and non-conflict areas.

Conflicts   Children   Education   Mortality   Ivory Coast   Sub-Saharan Africa