Armed Conflict and Fertility in Colombia, 2000–2010

This paper looks at the association between the Colombian Armed Internal Conflict (AIC) and fertility for women in the first decade of the 21st century when the conflict underwent a strategic change after the escalation of armed action by outlaw groups and frontal response by the Colombian government. We fit a Poisson model that incorporates spatial and temporal information, using individual-level data from the Colombian Demographic and Health Surveys from 2000 to 2010 and novel information, for the Colombian case, on the number of armed actions. In rural areas, we find that the AIC had a significant positive association with fertility and non-significant relationship in urban areas, of any size with robust and consistent estimators. Two possible explanations may clarify these results for a long-term conflict such as that in Colombia: (i) women’s responses to higher mortality levels and (ii) the weakening of local institutions assumed to provide protection and health-related services to women. Other than the improvement of health-related services in areas affected by the conflict, we also suggest data collection on these latter conditions directly from the population involved to facilitate future research on the connection between conflicts and demographic outcomes.