The impact of violence on child health outcomes: Evidence from Mexican panel data

An emerging literature has found that the early life exposure to conflict has important effects on physical and cognitive development. Both prenatal and postnatal negative shocks may affect child health outcomes. While this literature focuses on the large scale violence such as civil wars, there is no corresponding literature for areas with consistently high levels of criminal violence (but not at the level of a civil war). This discrepancy is important as many areas in the world, particularly Central and Latin America, experience consistently high levels of violence. This study examines whether these effects also extend to this lower violence setting by focusing on the sharp increase in violence (homicide rates) in countries like Mexico which observed an escalation in violence resulting from the crackdown on drug cartels after 2007. Even the literature that  focuses on the impact of large scale violence on children health confronts the issue of endogenous migration. Using panel data and sibling fixed effects, I study whether the levels and timing of municipality homicide rates affect children's health in Mexico. The panel nature of the data from Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS) is also helpful in controlling for various time varying individual and household characteristics from the pre-escalation period. This has always been a concern in the repeated cross-sectional data. Moreover, I use the intent-to-treat approach to shield the estimates from endogenous migration. Preliminary results suggests strong effect of in utero exposure (depending on the trimester and outocome variables) and in the first years of life. Furthermore, the study explores the potential mechanisms through which violence may affect child health.