Armed Con‡ict Exposure, Human Capital Investments and

Using a unique combination of household and violence data sets and a duration analysis methodology, this paper estimates the e¤ect that exposure to armed con‡ict has on school drop-out decisions of Colombian children between the ages of six and seventeen. After taking into account the possible endogeneity of municipal con‡ict related events through the use of instrumental variables, we …nd that armed con‡ict reduces the average years of schooling in 8.78% for all Colombian children. This estimate increases to 17.03 % for children between sixteen and seventeen years old. We provide evidence that such e¤ect may be induced mainly through higher mortality risks, and to lesser e¤ect due to negative economic shocks and lower school quality; all of which induce a trade-o ¤ between schooling and child labor.