War, Health, and Educational Attainment: A Panel of Children during Burundi’s Civil War

This article examines the impact of war-induced ill early childhood health on educational attainment in early adolescence. Using data on a small panel of children we find that children who were malnourished at baseline had on average attained fewer grades than children of the same year of birth cohort who were healthier at baseline. The effect is particularly salient for the older children who were most exposed to violence in their early childhood years. We find that the worse educational status of malnourished children is due to both an enrolment effect and a poor school performance effect.