Conflict, Educational Attainment and Structural Transformation: La Violencia in Colombia

We examine the long-term impact of violence on educational attainment, with evidence from Colombia's La Violencia. Individuals exposed to violence during, and especially before, their schooling years experience a significant and economically meaningful decrease in years of schooling. This impact has consequences beyond human capital accumulation: exposed cohorts engage in activities with less human capital content. Violence thus influenced aggregate development - particularly the process of structural transformation, in which some sectors gain prominence as income increases. The effects result not so much from the direct destruction of physical infrastructure, but from a effected households' responses to the hardships of conflict.