Abstract:
A growing body of evidence finds that early-life circumstances are an important determinant of an individual's future outcomes. Here I investigate how shocks in utero and in childhood a ffect human capital formation, and to what extent their experience at certain developmental stages matters more than others. I focus on violent conflicts that constitute multidimensional shocks to the well-being of many households in developing countries. Using monthly and municipality-level variation in the timing and severity of massacres in Colombia from 1999 to 2007, I show that children exposed to sudden changes in violence in utero and in childhood achieve lower height-for-age (0.11 SD), cognitive (PPVT falls by 0.15 SD and math reasoning and general knowledge fall by 0.19 and 0.16 SD), and socio-emotional outcomes (adequate interaction falls by 0.04 SD), and these results are robust to controlling for mother fixed-effects. Furthermore, I explore changes in parental investments as potential mechanisms, finding that changes in violence during a child's early-life is associated with lower quantity and quality of parenting. This is one of the first studies to investigate the e ffects of early-life violence on child cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes in a developing country and the first to investigate the role of parenting as a potential channel of transmission in a violent setting.