TY - JOUR
T1 - The (hidden) costs of political instability
T2 - Evidence from Kenya's 2007 election crisis
AU - Dupas, Pascaline
AU - Robinson, Jonathan
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Daron Acemoglu, Bruce Berman, Dara Cohen, Taryn Dinkelman, Kim Dionne, James Fearon, Sarah Green, Seema Jayachandran, David Laitin, Ted Miguel, Rohini Pande, Nishith Prakash, Leonard Rubenstein, Ryan Sheely, Chris Udry, two anonymous referees and numerous conference participants for helpful comments and suggestions. Though we cannot name them all individually, we are grateful to the field staff who collected this data. We thank in particular Carol Kemunto, Violet Kanyanga, Jack Adika, Eric Bwire, Anthony Oure, and Isaac Ojino for their field work, and Nathaniel Wamkoya for data entry. We thank Katie Conn, Eva Kaplan, Espen Beer Prydz, and Stephanie Ruiz for overseeing the data collection, and Sefira Fialkoff, Seth Kerstein, and Yao Yao for research assistance. We thank Innovations for Poverty Action for administrative support and the UCSC Committee on Research for funding. All errors are our own.
PY - 2012/11
Y1 - 2012/11
N2 - This paper studies the microeconomic impacts of the political crisis and civil conflict that immediately followed the December 2007 presidential election in Kenya. Income, expenditures, and consumption dramatically declined for a broad segment of the rural population for the duration of the conflict. To make up for the income shortfall, women who supply transactional sex engaged in higher risk sex both during and after the crisis. While this particular crisis was likely too short for these behavioral responses to seriously increase the risk of HIV or other STIs for these women, such responses could have long-term repercussions for health in countries with longer or more frequent crises. Overall, our results suggest that social unrest can be an important channel through which political instability can affect long-term outcomes such as health.
AB - This paper studies the microeconomic impacts of the political crisis and civil conflict that immediately followed the December 2007 presidential election in Kenya. Income, expenditures, and consumption dramatically declined for a broad segment of the rural population for the duration of the conflict. To make up for the income shortfall, women who supply transactional sex engaged in higher risk sex both during and after the crisis. While this particular crisis was likely too short for these behavioral responses to seriously increase the risk of HIV or other STIs for these women, such responses could have long-term repercussions for health in countries with longer or more frequent crises. Overall, our results suggest that social unrest can be an important channel through which political instability can affect long-term outcomes such as health.
KW - Kenyan post-election crisis
KW - Political instability
KW - Risk-coping
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2012.03.003
DO - 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2012.03.003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84864395218
SN - 0304-3878
VL - 99
SP - 314
EP - 329
JO - Journal of Development Economics
JF - Journal of Development Economics
IS - 2
ER -