Could Political Violence Affect Infant Mortality? The Colombian Case

Piedad Urdinola, University of California, Berkeley

Colombia has experienced for over 60 years a severe internal conflict that has intensified during the last decade. Several demographic behaviors have been affected by such long and intense conflict. In this paper I present some measurements of the very unusual mortality pattern. However, internal conflicts could be affecting other variables, not studied before, such infant mortality. In this paper, I will test whether political violence could be affecting infant mortality rates in Colombia during the last decade. I will use information on violence for the period from 1990 to 2000 with estimates of the IMR, which along with covariates, will allow me to analyze the effect on yearly IMR changes of changes in violence per municipalities using a difference in differences model. In addition, I will explore the micro-level data as this information is available from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) carried out in Colombia.