Civil War, Crop Failure, and Child Stunting in Rwanda

Economic shocks at birth have lasting
effects on children's health several years after the
shock. The authors calculate height for age z-scores for
children under age five using data from a Rwandan nationally
representative household survey conducted in 1992. They
exploit district and time variation in crop failure and
civil conflict to measure the impact of exogenous shocks
that children experience at birth on their height several
years later. They find that boys and girls born after the
shock in regions experiencing civil conflict are both
negatively affected with height for age z-scores 0.30 and
0.72 standard deviations lower, respectively. Conversely,
only girls are negatively affected by crop failure, with
these girls exhibiting 0.41 standard deviation lower height
for age z-scores and the impact is worse for girls in poor
households. Results are robust to using sibling difference
estimators, household level production, and rainfall shocks
as alternative measures of crop failure.