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Paper short abstract

We study how conflict-driven violence, displacement and service breakdown in Palestine affect children’s mental health and, through this channel, their school enrolment, delayed entry and dropout, using World Bank microdata from the 2022 Palestinians’ Psychological Conditions Survey.

Paper long abstract

Armed conflict threatens human capital formation not only through the destruction of physical infrastructure and income-generating opportunities, but also via damage to mental health. Children in conflict zones confront a combination of direct violence, displacement, and breakdown of basic services. These shocks affect their psychological well-being and may alter educational trajectories in ways that persist well beyond the end of active hostilities.

In Palestine, repeated cycles of violence, closures, demolitions, and mobility restrictions have created an environment in which children’s daily lives are tightly intertwined with conflict. A rich literature documents the adverse effects of conflict on schooling, lower test scores, reduced years of schooling, greater child labour, and higher dropout. At the same time, research in psychology and public health shows a high prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder and related symptoms among Palestinian children exposed to violence.

The explicit link between conflict exposure, children’s psychological trauma, and schooling decisions such as grade-for-age, late enrolment, and dropout is still underexplored. Existing economic studies treat mental health either as a control variable or as an unobserved “black box” shock. Conversely, clinical and psychological studies rarely connect trauma measures to detailed educational outcomes using cutting-edge causal methods.

This project seeks to bridge that gap by placing children’s psychological conditions at the centre of the analysis. Using the Palestinians’ Psychological Conditions Survey (2022), we quantify how exposure to violence, displacement, and service breakdown affects children’s mental health, and how this, in turn, shapes school enrolment patterns, delayed entry, and dropout.