Enjoy the posts below and chat with thesis writers via Zoom on Monday, May 25, 1-2pm ET!  Links available in each post and also here.

By Paula Chappel

Motivation

In my thesis, I investigate the impact of women’s education on their contraceptive knowledge and intent to use contraceptives. I exploit a Kenyan education policy change in January 2003 that made education free and compulsory. This is an important topic because better educated women are often healthier, and are more likely to be in the formal labor market and earn higher incomes. They are also likely to marry at a later age and, if they choose to become mothers, have fewer, healthier, and more educated children. These outcomes suggest that women’s school education, especially because due to potential effects on fertility, has the power to lift households and communities out of poverty. (World Bank, 2002)
Thus if indeed this primary school education policy is effective, and it increases the number of women attaining primary education then measuring the effect of this increase on women’s contraceptive knowledge helps to explain if some of the effects mentioned above are possible. Much of this work has been done in developed countries and less in developing countries.

Data

For my main analysis, I use Kenyan Demographic Health Surveys (KDHS) data from 2,931 respondents for the birth cohorts of 1994 and 1996. When the 2003 FPE policy was enacted, the 1996 birth cohort was seven years old and the 1994 birth cohort was nine years old. Since the 1996 birth cohort was exposed to the policy at a younger age, I interpret the 1996 birth cohort to have had more exposure to the policy than the 1994 birth cohort. For additional analysis, I use the Performance and Monitoring Accountability 2020 (PMA2020) data and KDHS data for more birth cohorts.

Methodology & Key Results

I assign treatment based on exogenous variation between birth cohorts. My findings show that the reform increased women’s educational attainment and literacy rates and led to an increase in knowledge of contraceptives. After including fixed effects for various demographics, I find that women born in 1996 are 4.72 percentage points more likely to obtain some education compared with those born in 1994. They are also 1.22 percentage points less likely to report they have no knowledge of contraceptives. When I assign varying intensities of exposure to the policy according to birth cohorts, I find women exposed to the policy are 8.79 percentage points more likely to get some education than those who are not exposed to the policy. For both analyzes, poor women are more likely to have their education and contraceptive knowledge increase as a result of the policy compared with women from other income brackets. The results of this paper are consistent with the notion that better-educated women have a greater understanding of contraceptives.

Please come chat with me at the Econ Senior Thesis Zoom sessions—Monday, May 25, 1-2pm ET—to learn more or ask any questions about my research or the senior thesis process: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/96528882732.

By Elizabeth Herington

“Fazlullah (local militant leader) was particularly popular in remote areas where people remembered how TNSM (militant-affiliated aid organization) volunteers had helped during the earthquake when the government was nowhere to be seen.”

-Malala Yousafzai, global education activist and survivor of Taliban violence, 2013

Civil violence has become the most prevalent form of political violence since World War II; more than half of all countries have experienced a form of civil conflict since 1960 (Blattman and Miguel 2010). In the post-Cold War era, and especially since 9/11, developed countries have seen security problems in developing countries as threats to their own national security. This has led policymakers in developed countries to intervene in conflict-affected developing countries; in 2016, 65% of all development aid went to countries identified as fragile by the OECD (OECD 2018 p. 11). Much of the Economic literature on foreign aid in conflict zones focuses on the effect of humanitarian aid on conflict in these regions, and many scholars argue that aid can prolong or provoke conflict. However, a significant portion of the aid provided in these areas is not humanitarian aid, but instead falls under a category which I call security assistance. Security assistance is aid provided to governments to help them provide essential services like military and police, effective justice systems, and critical infrastructure to their citizens. For my thesis, I wanted to explore the relative efficacy of these different kinds of interventions. Do they accomplish their stated goals of strengthening states, ending conflicts, and reducing suffering? Which interventions are most effective?

I explore the role of foreign aid in conflict beginnings and endings by developing a theory of the impact of aid on state legitimacy and of state legitimacy on civil conflict. State legitimacy is the citizens’ belief that their government’s laws should be obeyed. I argue that security assistance will increase state legitimacy and that humanitarian aid has an ambiguous effect on state legitimacy. I then argue that aid which increases state legitimacy will both prevent conflicts from beginning and end existing conflicts faster.

I first test the hypothesis that security assistance will increase state legitimacy using survey data on citizen perceptions of their government from Afrobarometer and subnational data on various sectors of foreign aid from AidData. Using an ordered logistic regression with province fixed effects, I find that increases in security assistance are associated with increased state legitimacy.

Table 1: Effect of Aid on State Legitimacy

Subnational unit dummies and standard controls are used in all specifications. Coefficients reported are odds ratios. Odds ratios show whether a one unit increase in the independent variable is associated with an individual being more or less likely to answer in a category of stronger agreement with the statement. Standard errors clustered at the province level are in parentheses.

*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

Next, I test the theory that aid which increases state capacity will prevent and end conflict using the same subnational AidData dataset and geocoded data on conflict from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program.  Using a hazard model with province fixed effects to estimate the probability of conflict ending, I find that both security assistance and humanitarian aid are associated with decreased length of conflict, and that government capacity building aid, a type of security assistance, is the most effective. Government capacity building aid includes projects like audits to reduce corruption, training court employees to better provide effective justice and democracy promotion efforts. I also find that security assistance policy instruments are more effective at ending conflict when combined for a Whole of Government approach than when employed alone, and that military aid alone may increase the length of conflict.

Table 2: Effect of Aid on Length of Conflict

Subnational unit dummies and standard controls are used in all specifications. Columns 1 and 2 present results from my preferred specification with different kinds of aid. Columns 3 and 4 present results from a regression estimating the effects of a Whole of Government approach. Conflict End is a dummy set =1 if an ongoing conflict ended in a given year, and Whole of Gvt is a dummy set =1 if all three kinds of security assistance were used. Coefficients from logistic regression are reported as marginal effects. Standard errors clustered at the province-level and determined by the delta method, are in parentheses.

*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

Using the same hazard model with province fixed effects, I further find that government capacity building aid is the only intervention associated with a decrease in the likelihood of civil conflict.

Subnational unit dummies and standard controls are used in all specifications. Columns 1 and 2 present results from my preferred specification with different kinds of aid. Columns 3 and 4 present results from a regression estimating the effects of a Whole of Government approach.  Conflict Start is a dummy set =1 if a conflict began in a given year, and Whole of Gvt is a dummy set =1 if all three kinds of security assistance were used. Coefficients from logistic regression are reported as marginal effects. Standard errors clustered at the province-level and determined by the delta method are in parentheses.

*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

I conclude that the kinds of aid which are effective in fragile states are different from, and less varied than, the kinds of aid which are effective in conflict states, and that policymakers should be careful to take initial conditions into account before designing interventions to prevent and end conflict in unstable states.

The OECD identifies state weakness as the single biggest spoiler for the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (OECD 2018 p. 6). In order to increase security and prosperity in the developing world, it is important for policymakers to understand the relative efficacy of different intervention strategies. Policymakers who are planning to intervene in an ongoing conflict should design comprehensive Whole of Government interventions, while policymakers planning to intervene in fragile states should focus their efforts on programs which will increase the local government’s bureaucratic, regulatory, and democratic capabilities and reduce corruption.

Please come chat with me at the Econ Senior Thesis Zoom sessions—Monday, May 25, 1-2pm ET—to learn more or ask any questions about my research or the senior thesis process: click here for Zoom link.

Works Cited:

Blattman, C., & Miguel, E. (2010). Civil War. Journal of Economic Literature, 48(1), 3–57. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.48.1.3

OECD. (2018). States of Fragility 2018. OECD. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264302075-en

Data Sets Used:

http://afrobarometer.org/data/merged-data

https://www.aiddata.org/datasets (AIMS datasets)

https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/ (Georeferenced Event Dataset)