Gender-differential effects of terrorism on education: The case of the 1981–1993 Punjab insurgency

Abstract This study examines the long-run effect of the 1981–1993 Punjab insurgency on the educational attainment of adults who were ages 6–16 at the time, using the 2005 India Human Development Survey. We find a substantial and statistically significant negative effect of terrorism on female educational attainment through a triple differences specification. We find that our main effects are robust to two separate placebo tests, fertility checks, selection bias and migration checks, caste fixed effects and alternative ways of measuring conflict. Additionally, we carry out a unique parallel short-term analysis of the effect of conflict on education for boys and girls. This analysis makes use of micro-level expenditure data from a farmer-level data set and sheds light on household investments during the insurgency. Results from this analysis are consistent with the long-term effects found in the first part of the paper.