M. Amara Dukuly, University of Minnesota
On Christmas Eve 1989, a Libyan-backed rebel group led by Charles Taylor invaded Liberia, sparking the First Liberian Civil War, which lasted until 1997. A second conflict followed in 1999 and ended in 2003. After nearly a decade and a half of civil war, Liberia is one of the poorest countries in the world and half of the population is illiterate. This paper examines the effects of the First and Second Liberian Civil Wars on literacy by county, cohort, and ethnicity. Using cross-sectional data from the Standard Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS 2007, 2013, 2019) and the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, I construct a weighted treatment variable measuring the total share of conflict deaths per county for individuals who were primary school-aged during the war. In a survey-weighted linear probability model, I interact total death exposure with county, birth cohort, and ethnicity for individuals born between 1964 and 1998, holding survey year, gender, and urban status constant. I find that nearly every county in Liberia showed statistically significant lower levels of literacy. Cohorts born between 1982 and 1993 exhibit significantly lower literacy probabilities relative to the pre-war cohort. Among ethnic groups, the Gio show a significant positive interaction, while the Mandingo, Krahn, and Mano exhibit negative but insignificant interactions. These findings suggest the Civil Wars disrupted literacy through geographic, cohort, and tribally-shaped channels.
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