Winners and Losers

Abstract

Liberia had two devastating civil wars 1989-2003. I am examining who benefitted from the large amounts of international aid and development programs that poured into the country during the post-war rebuilding period, in terms of school enrollment rates. With USAID’s Demographic and Health Surveys and Uppsala Conflict Data Program’s Georeferenced Event Dataset, I use probit and linear probability models to examine the determinants of being enrolled in school in 2007 and 2019. I find that females and kids living in rural areas had disproportionate recovery in the post-war period controlling for other explanatory variables. Household wealth was an important factor in determining enrollment. I also examine the concept of bounce-back, or rapid recovery in post-conflict contexts. I find that on a national level, there was significant recovery in enrollment rates, with about 51% of kids being enrolled in school in 2007 and about 81% being enrolled in 2019. I was unable to determine definitively whether or not this recovery was proportional to the amount of loss experienced due to the wars due to large standard deviations.