In my dissertation, I study the short- and long-term effects of early-life circumstances on individual’s human capital and explore some potential mechanisms driving these impacts. The focus on early-life conditions is motivated by the growing body of research showing the important role that early-life conditions play in shaping adult outcomes (Barker, 1992; Cunha and Heckman, 2007; Almond and Currie, 2011a). Evidence from natural experiments has found that adverse conditions during the in-utero and childhood periods (e.g., disease outbreaks, famines and malnutrition, weather shocks, ionizing radiation, earthquakes, air pollution) can have negative effects on health, education, and labor market outcomes (e.g., Almond, 2006; Almond et al., 2010; Van den Berg et al., 2006; Currie and Rossin-Slater, 2013; Almond, Edlund and Palme, 2009; Sanders, 2012). I focus on a particular shock which is violence – i.e., wars, armed conflicts, urban crime – that represents one of the most pervasive shocks for individual’s well-being and which mostly affects developing countries (Currie and Vogl, 2013). The World Bank (2013) estimates that more than 1.5 billion people in the developing world live in chronically violent contexts. Violence creates poverty, accentuates inequality, destroys infrastructure, displaces populations, disrupts schooling, and affects health. While recent research has shown the large damage on education and health outcomes from early life violence (Camacho, 2008; Akresh, Lucchetti and Thirumurthy, 2012; Minoiu and Shemyakina, 2012; Brown, 2014; Valente, 2011; Leon, 2012), several key questions remain unaddressed. First, how does violence affect other domains of human capital beside education and health (i.e., cognitive and non-cognitive skills)? Identifying such effects is important both because measures of human capital (physical, cognitive, and non-cognitive indicators) can explain a large percentage of the variation in later-life educational attainment and wages (Currie and Thomas, 1999; McLeod and Kaiser, 2004; Heckman, Stixrud and Urzua, 2006) and to understand mechanisms behind previous effects found for educational attainment and health. Second, to what extent do the effects of violence at different developmental stages (i.e., in-utero vs. in childhood) differ? Do the effects of violence persist in the long-term? Do impacts on the particular type of skill considered (e.g., health vs. cognitive outcomes) differ by the developmental timing of the shock? Third, given the size and persistence of the effects of violence, it is also natural to ask whether and how parental investments also may respond to these shocks. Family investments are important determinants of human capital (Cunha and Heckman, 2007; Aizer and Cunha, 2014) and parental responses can play a key role in compensating or reinforcing the effects of a shock (Almond and Currie, 2011a). At present, well-identified empirical evidence on this question is scarce. Finally, and perhaps most importantly from a policy perspective, is there potential for remediation?: Can social programs that are available to the community help mitigate the negative effects of violence on vulnerable children? My identification strategy exploits the temporal and geographic variation in local violence conditions. In particular, I exploit the occurrence of specific violent events such as homicides and massacres at the monthly-year-municipality levels in Colombia and I use large and varied micro data sets to provide causal estimates. I believe that the results from my research can shed some light on the consequences of early-life exposure to violence on human capital, some of the potential mechanisms through which these impacts operate, and provide some insights on possible public policy implications. In the first essay, “Early-life Conditions, Parental Investments, and Child Development: Evidence from a Violent Country,” I investigate how exposure to community violence during the in utero and childhood periods affect a child’s physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional development; how violence affects parental investments such as parenting quality; and whether social policies available to the community help mitigate the negative effects of violence on children. I focus on children, which is a particularly vulnerable subpopulation: Children in developing countries are subject to more and more frequent adverse conditions, start disadvantaged, and receive lower levels of investments compared with children from wealthier environments (Currie and Vogl, 2013). I show that children exposed to massacres in their municipality during their in utero and in childhood periods achieve lower health, cognitive, and socio-emotional outcomes and that the timing in which these exposures occur matters. In particular, exposure to massacres in late pregnancy and in childhood reduce child’s health and exposures in early pregnancy and in childhood lower cognitive test scores. Adequate interaction, an indicator of child socio-emotional development, falls among children who were exposed to violence after birth. Moreover, results show that violence is negatively associated with birth weight, an important input in the production of human capital. This impact is driven by exposure during the first trimester of pregnancy. Furthermore, I find that changes in violence during a child’s childhood are associated with lower quantity and quality of parenting. In particular, I find that an increase in violence is associated with a decline in the time mothers spend with their child, a decrease in the frequency of routines that stimulate a child’s cognitive development, and an increase in psychological aggression, which could reflect a mother’s stress. Overall, these results show little evidence that parents compensate the negative effect of violence on child outcomes. This is the first study to investigate the effects of early-life violence on child cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes in a developing country and among the first to investigate the role of parenting as a potential channel of transmission. Lastly, I find weak evidence that social programs have remediating impacts on children affected by violence. In the second essay, titled “The Hidden Costs and Lasting Legacies of Violence on Education: Evidence from Colombia”, I provide evidence of the long term impacts of exposure to crime and violence, from the prenatal period to age five, on an individual’s educational attainment. My identification strategy exploits the temporal and geographic variation in cohorts of individuals exposed to homicide rates during in their early lives during the 1980s and 1990s in Colombia, a period with an unprecendented rise in criminal activity. I use Census data that provide detailed information on the date and municipality of birth, and long-run outcomes (i.e., education) for each individual, which enables me to identify the violence to which a person was exposed in utero and in early childhood (as well as in later stages). I find that high violence in early-life is associated with lower educational attainment in the future (years of schooling and lower school enrollment). The findings also show that in utero and early-childhood exposure to violence has a more pronounced impact on human capital attainment than exposure at other stages of the life course (i.e., school age, adolescence). The timing and the magnitude of the effects are important considering the huge inequality in education in developing countries.

Thesis (M.A.)--B.Y.U. Dept. of Graduate Studies in Religious Instruction.

This dissertation contemplates the radical shifts and changes in language and education due to and during the Sri Lankan civil war (1983-2009), utilizing the detailed method of classroom ethnography in postwar Jaffna to comprehend macro-perspective problems about language and nationalism in postwar Sri Lanka. It attempts to answer some of the following questions: In a country trying to heal and recover from the trauma of war and violence based on ethnolinguistic difference, what does postwar education and schooling look like? In a region of the country that has a proud history and heritage of Tamil language and culture, yet a simultaneous colonial and postcolonial tradition of English language education and schooling, and now, a continued postwar Sinhalese military and police presence, how do people negotiate and navigate these three distinct linguistic spheres of practice? From the perspectives of research informants and interlocutors, what does life look like in contemporary postwar Jaffna? I find that almost three decades of war and outmigration have resulted in an ongoing transformation concerning learning, language, and life in the Jaffna peninsula. The decline in English language education combined with the predominantly monolingual Tamil-speaking environment that Jaffna provides for school children solidifies their ethnoreligious identities while limiting opportunity. However, we see a transformation in local economies due to war and emigration and the influx of remittance income, which has created new patterns and habits in consumption and even a shift in priority and work ethic. Therefore, we see the emergence of a new generation in northern Sri Lanka navigating this postwar space, embracing cultural changes that have been brought about by these processes of war, migration, and increased interconnectedness in what is still the most conservative and traditional region of the country.

In 2016, the Colombian National Congress endorsed the Peace Agreement with the largest guerrilla group in the country, FARC. Prior to this political benchmark episode, the National Government, under different executive agendas, sought to overcome the Colombian armed conflict through different approaches. Formal education has been historically conceived as a central area for advancing peace and democracy. Today, under a holistic model of Transitional Justice and the slow implementation of the 2016 Peace Accords, schools hold a key role in forming young citizens for peacebuilding, respect for human rights, and democratization. In this research project, I examine how high school students take up civic subjectivity in relation to the ongoing political transition in Colombia. I also explore the interplay between civic subjectivity and historical memory, emphasizing how students’ understandings of the past inform their civic positionings and actions in the present regarding the armed conflict and the prospects for conflict transformation. This study engages with the Foucauldian conceptualization of subjectivity as the two-fold process of “being-made” and “self-making”. Drawing on 22 weeks of ethnographic fieldwork at Colegio San Antonio public school (Eastern Antioquia), I analyze students’ encounters with the difficult past —often in the form of textured silences— and how these give shape to their construction of previous and contemporary armed violence and civic action/responsibilities on this matter. By paying attention to participants’ everyday lives and social navigation inside and outside of school, this dissertation discusses the tensions and negotiations youth face in the process of giving historical and political meanings to the armed conflict and current transition. It also sheds light on the intertwined dimensions of temporality, spatiality, and experience in how youth conceive and position themselves as civic actors. This study demonstrates how, through civic disjunctures, students partake in their becoming as citizens who challenge fixed and already-established notions on what peace is, should be, and what the school is expected to do to form peaceful citizens. This dissertation concludes with some reflections about the possible intersections between civic education and Transitional Justice’s efforts.

Thesis (Master of Military Studies)-Marine Corps Command and Staff College, 2008. / Title from title page of PDF document (viewed on: Feb 2, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.