Population Size and Civil Conflict Risk: Is There A Causal Link?

Abstract

[spa] La estimación del impacto del tamaño de la populación sobre la probabilidad de conflicto civil se complica por el sesgo de endogeneidad y las variables omitidas. Este artículo trata el problema de causalidad utilizando métodos de variables instrumentales en un panel de 37 países del África Sub-sahariana en el período 1981-2004. Encontramos que un aumento de la población en un 1% aumenta la probabilidad de conflicto civil por un 5.2%.

[eng] Does an expansion of the population size expose nation states to a higher risk of suffering from civil conflict? Obtaining empirical evidence for a causal relationship is difficult due to reverse effects and omitted variable bias. This paper addresses causality issues by using randomly occurring drought as an instrumental variable to generate exogenous variation in population size for a panel of 37 Sub-Saharan countries over the period 1981- 2004. Instrumental variable estimates yield that a one percentage point increase in population size raises the risk of civil conflict by over 5.2 percentage points.