Hard to Forget: the Long-Lasting Impact of War on Mental Health

Massimiliano Bratti, Mariapia Mendola and Alfonso Miranda

No 388, Development Working Papers from Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano

Abstract: In this paper we examine the impact of war trauma experienced during the 1992-1995 Bosnia and Herzegovina conflict on individual mental health and labor market outcomes. By using a medically-validated depression scale and an instrumental-variable approach we show that, six years after the conflict, traumatized individuals are more likely to be at risk of depression(by 60 percentage points) and have worse labor-market outcomes. Our results are robust to a number of sensitivity checks accounting for individual geographical mobility and different treatment intensities, and suggest that the negative effects of war trauma are not mainly mediated by physical health problems.

Keywords: war trauma; mental health; depression; Bosnia and Herzegovina (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42
Date: 2015-11-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Hard to forget:The long-lasting impact of war on mental health (2016)
Working Paper: Hard to Forget: The Long-Lasting Impact of War on Mental Health (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:csl:devewp:388

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