Civil war, crop failure, and child stunting in Rwanda

The article focuses on how exposure to two different types of exogenous shocks at birth leads to worse health outcomes in the short run, several years after the shock. Consistent with our findings that, of the children exposed to crop failure, only girls suffer negative health impacts, the literature provides ample evidence of a gender bias in outcomes. The remainder of the article is organized as follows. Section II provides an overview of the Rwandan rural economy and describes in detail the spatial and temporal event data for the crop failure and armed conflict. Children with low height for their age are considered stunted, an indicator of chronic malnutrition, and are likely to be on a different growth trajectory for the rest of their lives. The empirical identification strategy can be illustrated by examining the nonparametric relationship between height-for-age z-scores and children's birth cohort.