War and Local Collective Action in Sierra Leone

John Bellows Edward Miguel *

First version: January 2006

This version: November 2006

Abstract: We estimate the effects of the brutal 1991-2002 Sierra Leone civil war using unique
nationally representative household data on conflict experiences, postwar economic outcomes,
and local politics and collective action. Individuals whose households personally experienced
more intense war violence are robustly more likely to attend community meetings, more likely to
vote, more likely to contribute to local public goods, and are more aware of local politics.
Several tests indicate selection into victimization is not driving the results. The relationship
between conflict intensity and postwar outcomes is weaker at more aggregate levels, suggesting
that the war’s primary impact was on individual preferences rather than on institutions or local
social norms. More speculatively, the findings could help partially explain the rapid postwar
economic and political recovery observed in Sierra Leone and after several other recent African
civil wars.

*
John Bellows, Department of Economics, 549 Evans Hall #3880, University of California, Berkeley, CA
94720-3880, USA, jbellows@econ.berkeley.edu
Edward Miguel, Department of Economics, 549 Evans Hall #3880, University of California, Berkeley,
CA 94720-3880, USA, emiguel@econ.berkeley.edu. U.C. Berkeley and NBER

Acknowledgements: We are grateful to Rachel Glennerster, Gerard Roland, Katherine Whiteside,

Yongmei Zhou, and David Zimmer for helpful discussions and for their valued collaboration on related
research projects. Berndt Eckhardt of Sierra Leone Information System assisted in acquiring and
analyzing GIS data. We thank Eva Arceo, Chris Blattman, Karen Feree, Christina Paxson, Daniel Posner,
Uri Simonsohn, Leonard Wantchekon, Jeremy Weinstein, and seminar audiences at the 2006 AEA
Meetings, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, February 2006 NBER Economics of National Security
Meeting, 2006 Pacific Development Association Conference, 2006 NBER Africa Meeting, the Working
Group in African Political Economy, and U.C. Berkeley Development Workshop for useful comments.
The usual disclaimer applies.
I. Introduction

Civil war has been a prominent feature of recent history in Sub-Saharan Africa: more than two-thirds

of countries in the region experienced an episode of civil war during the past 25 years. Some

scholars have claimed these wars have played a role in the region’s disappointing recent economic

performance. For example, a recent World Bank report claims: “[t]he legacy effects of civil war are

usually so adverse that they cannot reasonably be viewed as social progress…[Civil war] has been

development in reverse” (World Bank 2003: 32). Yet the rapid postwar recovery experiences of

some African countries after brutal civil wars – notably, Mozambique and Uganda – suggest that war

need not have persistent negative economic consequences: in the decade following the end of their

wars, Mozambique and Uganda experienced annual per capita income growth of 3.9% and 4.6%,

respectively, well above the African average (United Nations 2003). This paper analyzes a novel

nationally representative dataset from postwar Sierra Leone with the goal of better understanding the

short-run economic and political impacts of civil war.

Recent research has shown that the long run effects of war on population and the economic

growth are typically minor. Studies that focus on United States bombing – including in Japan (Davis

and Weinstein 2002), Germany (Brakman et al 2004) and Vietnam (Miguel and Roland 2005) – find

few if any persistent impacts of the bombing on local population or economic performance. To the

extent that war impacts are limited to the destruction of capital, these findings are consistent with the

predictions of the neoclassical economic growth model, which predicts rapid catch-up growth

postwar. However, the neoclassical growth model has little to say about the impact of war on

institutions, politics, social norms, or individual preferences. Given the extreme trauma experienced

by civil war victims, it is plausible that effects along these human dimensions could be more

substantial and longer lasting than any impacts on capital investment levels.

1
 War could also potentially generate large impacts on both national and local institutions.

Tilly (1975) argues that wars historically promoted state formation and nation building in Europe,

ultimately strengthening institutional capacity and promoting economic development. A broader

definition of institutions might include the social equilibrium reached by individual rational actors.

In experimental economics evidence from Honduras, Castillo and Carter (2004) find that people in

locales that experienced extensive destruction from Hurricane Mitch – which, although traumatic, is

arguably not as severe as the violence experienced by many civil war victims – shared significantly

more of the “pie” with their partner in a Dictator Game. This suggests traumatic experiences could

also have a positive impact on altruism or on local social norms regarding cooperation.

At the individual level, the experience of being a victim of war violence could also

profoundly change individual beliefs, values, and preferences. An emerging psychological literature

has documented some of these individual responses to conflict-related trauma. Studies often focus

on symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome (e.g. Dygrove et al 2002), but a subset of the

literature now also explores positive responses to trauma, the so-called post-traumatic growth theory

(Tedeschi and Calhoun 1996, Powell et al 2003), including changes in political action and beliefs.

For example, Israelis who survived the Holocaust are more religious, more optimistic and at the same

time more extreme in their political views (Carmil and Breznitz 1991), while Palestinians who

personally survived aerial attacks are more likely to engage in political activism (Punamaki et al

1997). One key limitation of this literature is the use of small respondent samples of unknown

representativeness.

The distinction between how individuals react to their own personal experiences versus by

observing others is critical for understanding the nature of civil war impacts in general as well as in

this study of Sierra Leone. It is also an issue that is amenable to laboratory experiments: Simonsohn

et al. (2006) find that individuals’ own personal experience (playing the Prisoner’s Dilemma and

2
other standard experiments) is far more influential in shaping subsequent game play than the first-

hand observation of others’ experiences in the lab.

Many studies of the determinants of U.S. political participation have focused on how costs

and other economic factors influence the choice to vote, although it is unclear these rational choice

voting models have been successful.1 In fact, there is growing evidence on how psychological and

social factors affect political participation. Green and Garber (2004) find that subtle changes in the

framing of political messages can have major impacts on voter turn-out. U.S. parents who lost in

school choice lotteries for their children are significantly more likely to vote in subsequent school

board elections, compared to parents who won (Hastings et al 2005). In a related finding, U.S. voters

whose county suffered a seemingly random misfortune – including local floods, shark attacks, or flu

epidemics – tend to punish political incumbents in later elections (Achen et al 2004). Theoretical

explanations for this “expressive voting” are based on the assumption that victims derive some

additional utility from voting relative to non-victims. Given these positive political participation

impacts among school lottery losers and those whose town suffered a shark attack, a finding that

political activism increases among civil war victims seems intuitively plausible.

Unfortunately, the extreme scarcity of household survey data from contemporary conflict and

post conflict societies has limited research progress on questions related to the economic and political

aftermath of civil wars. One exceptional aspect of this project is the availability of high quality

nationally representative household data from Sierra Leone containing detailed information on

household experiences with war violence as well as on immediate postwar political and collective

action behaviors, in addition to the more standard socioeconomic questions. The main empirical

results focus on the individual level analysis made possible by this remarkable dataset. We also draw

1
Green and Shapiro (1994) argue these models have performed especially poorly with regards to explaining
determinants of voting behavior.

3
on a collection of other new data sources from Sierra Leone to estimate the relationship between

local conflict and postwar outcomes at the more aggregated chiefdom level.2

In our main result, we find that individuals whose households directly experienced war

violence are much more politically active than non-victims. War victims are significantly more likely

to vote (by 2.4 percentage points in our preferred specification), attend community meetings (by 5.7

percentage points), contribute to local public goods, and be knowledgeable about local politics.3 This

relationship is robust across two independently collected survey samples and multiple econometric

specifications, including a specification with village fixed effects, which compares neighbors within

the same village, but with different violence experiences, to one another. Several tests indicate that

systematic individual selection into victimization is unlikely to be driving the results; for instance,

violence effects are also strong for those too young in age to have been community leaders at the

start of the civil war, among whom conflict-related violence victimization is arguably more random

than is violence against adults.

Yet two to three years after the end of the war, there are – perhaps surprisingly – no lasting

impacts on household socioeconomic status measures, including asset ownership, income earning

activities, as well as consumption expenditures and child nutrition, so socioeconomic differences do

not appear to be behind the observed differences in political mobilization.

In contrast, we do not detect significant additional impacts of violence at the more aggregated

chiefdom level. Chiefdoms that experienced greater violence do show greater overall political

activism in certain dimensions, but these broader impacts are less robust than the individual level

effects, suggesting that the war’s primary impact was on individual preferences rather than on local

political institutions or social norms.

2
The chiefdoms in Sierra Leone are administrative units that were formalized by the British in the 1930s. These
colonial boundaries remain salient today as most people identify their residential location by the chiefdom. The
average chiefdom has roughly 20,000 people.
3
In a related result, Blattman (2006) finds that former child soldiers in Uganda are significantly more likely to vote
than other youth.

4
 Civil war experiences are transformative for many, and our analysis suggests that one short-

run legacy is increasing individual political participation and local public good provision. As we

discuss in the conclusion, this finding echoes the observations of other scholars of Sierra Leone and

speaks to the remarkable resilience of ordinary Sierra Leoneans. More speculatively, the findings of

this paper also contribute to the recent debate on the underlying causes of Africa’s terrible recent

economic performance, and speak against claims that civil war legacies are major long-run

impediments to economic and political development in Africa.

II. The Sierra Leone Civil War

Sierra Leone was ravaged by a civil war that started in 1991 and lasted until January 2002. During

the war an estimated 50,000 Sierra Leoneans were killed, over half of the population was displaced

from their homes, and thousands were victims of amputations, rapes, and assaults (Human Rights

Watch 1999).

A. Origins of the war

Just before the war began, Sierra Leone was the second poorest country in the world (United Nations

1993). For the preceding two decades the country had been ruled by dictators who enriched

themselves through illicit deals involving diamonds, while doing next to nothing to provide needed

services such as health care and education (Reno 1995). Partially as a result of the widespread

discontent towards the corruption and ineffectiveness of the government, a small group of rebels,

who had entered the country from Liberia in 1991, were successful in recruiting disenfranchised

youth to rise up violently against the status quo. As their numbers swelled by early 1992, these

rebels, known as the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), spread the armed conflict to all parts of the

country. Some scholars have claimed that the initial motivations of the RUF were idealistic, and that

the early rebels were guided by a strong sense of political grievances related to the failings of the

corrupt regime (Richards 1996).

5
 Another important factor in the RUF’s original motivations was access to Sierra Leone’s

diamond wealth. Mining diamonds in Sierra Leone requires no heavy machinery or technology,

since these alluvial stones sit close to the surface in dried riverbeds, so any armed group that

controlled a diamond area could extract and then sell the diamonds for large profits. All armed

groups participated to some extent in diamond smuggling during the conflict, and the control of these

diamond areas was an extremely important objective for all groups. David Keen notes that “[a]ny

battles were largely restricted to the areas with the richest diamond deposits” (Keen 2005: 212).

Additionally, since large-scale diamond smuggling was possible so long as the country remained in

chaos, profits from these “blood diamonds” represented an important incentive for armed groups to

prolong the war (Keen 2005: 50).

In contrast to most popular media coverage on African civil wars, neither ethnic nor religious

divisions played a central role in the Sierra Leone conflict. The RUF rebels targeted people from

every ethnic group and throughout the country, and statistical analysis of documented human rights

violations shows that no ethnic group was disproportionately represented among RUF victims

(Conibere et al 2004). There is also no evidence that levels of civilian abuse were higher when a

particular armed faction and the community were predominantly from different ethnic groups

(Humphries and Weinstein 2006: 438).

B. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the Sierra Leone Army (SLA)

Although there were many different actors in the decade-long war, the majority of the violence was

perpetrated by the RUF: the official government truth and reconciliation commission, which

documented war atrocities reports that over 70% of all human rights abuses were committed by RUF

fighters (Conibere et al 2004). Our own analysis of the No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ) conflict

mapping project, which is a comprehensive record of all reported armed violence during the war,

similarly concludes that 75% of all attacks and battles involved the RUF as the primary fighting force

6
(NPWJ 2005). The following incidents recorded in the NPWJ report are fairly typical of the brutal

and seemingly arbitrary RUF raids on civilians:

“In the early hours of 27 May 1997, the town of Karina (Biriwa Chiefdom, Bombali
District) was attacked by RUF / AFRC forces carrying guns and other weapons.
Soldiers surrounded the central mosque and killed 10 civilians celebrating the
Muslim feast of “Jonbedeh”… An unknown number of people were injured trying to
escape. RUF/AFRC forces raped an unknown number of women, and abducted 30
young civilian men and women. During the attack, numerous houses were burned
down.” (p. 133)

“RUF forces attack Koi town (Nongowa Chiefdom, Kenema District) early one morning in
mid-1994, reportedly to terrorize the inhabitants. … They fired indiscriminately and many
civilians were killed and others were wounded. The town was looted and people were forces
to carry the stolen property to Peyama.” (p. 303)

“On 11 March 1998, RUF/AFRC forces attacked the headquarter town of Jagbwema (Fiama
Chiefdom, Kono District). RUF/AFRC forces entered the town firing indiscriminately.
More than 70 houses were burnt and the town was massively looted. During the night, the
RUF/AFRC forces abducted three people, including the Town Chief, who were all later
killed. On 24 March 1998, RUF/AFRC forces coming from Jagbwema attacked Yeanoh,
shooting and killing many people.” (p. 361)

“On 26 December 1994, RUF forces attacked Mattru on the Rail (Tikonko Chiefdom,
Bo District) in the afternoon, mutilating civilians’ arms and legs. The RUF then
opened sporadic gunfire on the civilians, killing many people, looting their property
and burning down their houses. They also abducted civilian youths who they
conscripted into the RUF forces.” (p. 395)

The extent of targeting of community leaders or other opponents during RUF attacks is

important in the later analysis. It is useful here to distinguish between regions where the RUF did not

establish permanent bases and thus mainly resorted to raids like those described above, versus

regions with permanent bases that were occupied for extended periods. The ability to systematically

attack particular types of civilians is inherently greater in areas the RUF occupied relative to areas

they only briefly raided. The NPWJ report indicates that slightly more than half of all chiefdoms (86

of 152 chiefdoms) did not have permanent RUF bases during the war. In the analysis below we

restrict attention to these areas, to gauge whether estimated war violence impacts are robust to a

subsample where RUF violence against civilians was likely to be largely indiscriminate.

7
 One feature of the fighting that has drawn attention from international observers is the

cooperation between the rebels and the Sierra Leone Army (SLA). These two groups coordinated

their movements in order to avoid direct battles, and at times worked out mutually beneficial profit

sharing arrangements in diamond areas. This was especially true following the 1997 coup that

formally brought the SLA and RUF together into a national coalition government called the Armed

Forces Revolutionary Council, or AFRC (Keen 2005). Some soldiers apparently fought for the SLA

by day and the RUF by night. As a result, the main victims of the violence were civilians, who were

terrorized not only by the RUF but also by the army that was supposed to protect them.

C. Civil Defense Forces (CDF)

In order to protect themselves from the terror of RUF and SLA fighters, many communities

organized their own local fighting groups, which became known collectively as the Civil Defense

Forces (CDF). CDF fighters were overwhelmingly civilians and they relied primarily on local

fundraising for supplies. While there were numerous manifestations of the CDF throughout the

country, the command and organization of the CDF were often linked with traditional chiefly

authorities. For example, the largest CDF, known as the kamajors, were an extension of traditional

Mende hunter groups (Ferme 2001).

There are many accounts of ordinary civilians going to heroic lengths to protect themselves

from RUF attacks. One such account from Allister Sparks (2003:309), an international election

observer in the 1996 Sierra Leone presidential election, describes how the citizens of Kenema Town

bravely resisted the RUF in order to exercise their right to vote:

“The polling stations were due to open at 7 am on 26 February, but at exactly 6.15 am
the rattle of small-arms fire broke out around the centre. … For two-and-a-half hours
the firefight raged. At times the rebels ran close past our building and we could hear
them shouting: “No election! No election!” between their bursts of AK-47 fire. Then,
indistinctly at first but gradually increasing in volume, we heard a counter-chant
coming from the direction of the town: “We want vote! We want vote!” Thousands of
people were pouring into the streets, and as the chanting crowd swelled they ran
through the town waving palm leaves. … Whether it was this display of public

8
 courage or a successful counterattack by the local military was unclear, but the rebels
began to withdraw and the shooting subsided. As the observers made their way
gingerly into the town, crowds lining the streets yelled impatiently at us: “Bring the
boxes. We want vote!” The polling stations opened late, some not until the afternoon,
but electoral officials worked frantically to open extra stations, and by the time the
polls closed at 6 pm nearly every registered adult in Kenema had voted.” (p. 309)

The CDF continues to be admired within Sierra Leone for their selfless defense of civilians.

However, late in the conflict when their power and numbers had grown, some CDF units lost

discipline and they too began to abuse civilians and enter the illicit trade in diamonds, although to

less of an extent than the RUF or SLA (Keen 2005: 268).

The rise of the CDF is illustrative of two points raised in the introduction. First, the CDF is

an example of how war can create influential new institutions. Second, the account above presents a

concrete example of how Sierra Leonean individuals responded to war violence with an increased

desire to assert their political rights. We return to both of these points in the empirical analysis below.

Following the brutal 1999 rebel attack on Freetown, a large deployment of United Kingdom

and United Nations troops finally brought an end to the war. These foreign troops conducted a

disarmament campaign and secured a peace treaty in early 2002. Donor and non-governmental

organization (NGO) assistance has since played a major role in reconstructing physical infrastructure,

resettling internally displaced people (almost all of whom had returned home by 2003), and funding

other government expenditures. National elections for a president and members of parliament were

held in 2002, and local government elections – the first in over thirty years – in 2004.

III. Empirical Strategy and Data

A. Estimation Strategy

The literature reviewed in the introduction suggests that there are at least two plausible channels

through which violence can impact postwar behavior and outcomes.

9
 First, there may be individual level impacts, if the trauma associated with directly

experiencing violence leads to changes in beliefs, identities, values and preferences. To investigate

this relationship, we compare postwar outcomes and behaviors across individuals that suffered from

different degrees of violence during the conflict. The preferred specification includes village (or

enumeration area) fixed effects, so the analysis essentially neighbors within the same village.4

The identifying assumption is that, conditional on observable characteristics, violence

victimization within villages is close to random at the household level. This might not hold if there

was systematic targeting by fighters along some unobserved household dimension, in which case the

observed relationship between victimization and postwar outcomes could in part be due to omitted

variable bias. We carry out several tests to examine the extent of selection into war violence below,

and these indicate that any selection bias is likely to be relatively minor.

Concerns about selection are mitigated by the specific characteristics of Sierra Leone villages

and the nature of the RUF attacks. Our surveys indicate that rural Sierra Leone villages consist

almost entirely of subsistence farmers, and there is typically no conspicuous landowning elite for the

RUF to target, as would be the case in some other societies. Additionally, Sierra Leone villages are

very small, usually consisting of a handful of inter-related extended families5, so in the specifications

including village fixed effects we effectively make comparisons across this small and relatively

homogenous collection of households. As the above accounts demonstrate, RUF attacks on civilians

were often brief, chaotic, and indiscriminate in nature, which provided little opportunity for precise

targeting of community leaders.

4
In the GoBifo sample (described below) villages were selected, then individuals were randomly selected for
surveys within the village. In the IRCBP sample, enumeration areas were selected first. In most IRCBP cases an
enumeration area corresponds to a single village, but in some instances one enumeration area contains two smaller
villages. In the urban settings, an IRCBP enumeration area is equivalent to a block or a neighborhood.
5
In the two districts (Bombali and Bonthe) where we have detailed data on village size, there are only 33 and 29
households per village on average, respectively.

10
 According to many accounts of the war, the one group that the RUF was able to target was

members of traditional authority families (chiefs), who were well known and visible in their localities

(Keen 2005; Richards 1996). We have data at the household level on whether the households were

members of the traditional authority and thus are able to control for this characteristic in the analysis.

Other measures of socio-economic status, including education, are not robustly correlated with

victimization, suggesting that targeting along other lines was relatively rare. While we admittedly

cannot rule out that some targeting of politically active households occurred, we feel that the

observed relationships we estimate primarily reflect the impacts of war victimization on postwar

behavior, rather than selection bias, and we present several tests of this claim below.

Second, there may also be war impacts at more aggregated levels due to changes in

institutions or social norms brought on by the conflict. We investigate these effects by comparing

chiefdoms that experienced different levels of conflict intensity. In the chiefdom level analysis, we

rely on a rich set of local characteristics as explanatory variables to ensure we are isolating the effect

of violence. These controls include the number of diamond mines, roads, population density, and in

some specifications prewar socioeconomic measures. Additionally, district fixed effects are included

to account for broader regional variation in unobservable characteristics.

An important caveat of the entire empirical strategy is worth emphasizing: we focus on local

comparisons across individuals and across chiefdoms, and cannot estimate the overall national

impact of the Sierra Leone civil war. The data do no permit the estimation of national impacts

because no suitable counterfactual exists.6 This caveat is important, as the net national effect of the

war could be negative even in light of any positive local violence victimization impacts that we

estimate.

B. Individual Data

6
Liberia shares similar geography, history and culture with Sierra Leone, but Liberia was also experiencing a civil
war during this time so it cannot be used a peacetime counterfactual.

11
Data on individual experiences with war violence is extremely rare for post conflict societies, and

this has limited research progress in estimating civil war impacts. The broad collection of household

level and chiefdom level data on conflict experiences and postwar outcomes makes ours among the

most comprehensive datasets from a post-conflict society.

In the present analysis we make use of data from two unusual household surveys that were

collected in 2005, a mere three years after the war ended. The first survey is nationally

representative7 and was conducted by the Institutional Reform and Capacity Building Project

(IRCBP).8 The second survey was conducted as baseline data for a government assistance program

called “GoBifo” and it covers only selected wards within two districts. The location of sample

enumeration areas for the IRCBP and GoBifo surveys are presented in Figures 1 and 2, respectively.

Details on these surveys, including sample sizes, can be found in the data appendix.

These two surveys contain detailed questions on household war victimization experiences.

The IRCBP survey contains the following three retrospective questions: “Were any members of your

household killed during the conflict?” “Were any members injured or maimed during the conflict?”

and “Were any members made refugees during the war?” We create a victimization index as the

average of responses to these violence related questions (Table 1, panel A); as we discuss below,

breaking the index down into its component questions does not substantively change the results. The

data also includes information on household assets, some respondent characteristics (including

education), and multiple measures of political engagement, voting, participation in collective action,

and self-expressed levels of trust and cooperation (Table 1, panels B, C, D, and E). Because the two

surveys were conducted independently and using different sampling frames, carrying out the analysis

on both provides a robustness check.

7
The capital Freetown is excluded from the analysis. Freetown is Sierra Leone’s only large city and its local
institutions and history are quite different from the rest of the country.
8
The IRCBP is affiliated with the government of Sierra Leone and its primary role is to support the ongoing
decentralization of government services.

12
C. Chiefdom Data

We also use the number of reported attacks and battles in each chiefdom as an additional dimension

of violence. The number of attacks and battles is related to, but distinct from, the household reports

of victimization, as it also includes the battles between troops that did not involve civilians. The

2004 No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ) conflict mapping project compiled all reports by human

rights organization and the media on the location and intensity of violence during the conflict (Table

1, panel F). We construct a measure of attacks and battles from the descriptions included in this

report. The correlation across the household victimization measure and the number of attacks and

battles at the chiefdom level is moderate at 0.3. Note that the two measures of conflict-related

violence are broadly analogous to the two types of commonly used crime data, crime victimization

data versus official crime reports.

Additional chiefdom level data is constructed from multiple sources. The 2004 Sierra Leone

Integrated Household Survey provides data on nutrition, education and socioeconomic outcomes

(Table 1, panel G). The 2005 School Survey provides data on the quality, monitoring and funding of

local education facilities (Table 1, panel H). The 2003 Sierra Leone Data Encyclopedia provides

information on the number of non-governmental organization (NGO) projects in each chiefdom

(Table 1, panel H). The GIS data provides information on the location of diamond mines, roads, and

population density (Table 1, panel I). The 1989 Sierra Leone Household Survey provides the only

existing data we are aware of on prewar socioeconomic conditions (Table 1, panel I).9 Further

details on data sources and variable construction are provided in the data appendix.

The variation in chiefdom level civilian victimization is presented in Figure 3. As expected,

violence is concentrated in the eastern part of the country near Liberia, but some violence was

experienced in all regions. Figure 4 presents the residuals of the victimization index after the district

9
The sample for the 1989 household survey includes fewer than half of all chiefdoms in the country. The
documentation for the data set is incomplete, making it impossible to know how exactly this sample was chosen.

13
means have been subtracted off. This measure of local violence is effectively used in specifications

that include district fixed effects. As is apparent from the figure, subtracting off district averages

emphasizes the considerable variation in violence across neighboring chiefdoms.

We next investigate the relationship between war intensity and the different factors that are

thought to have contributed to onset and to the length of the war. The most robust finding is that

chiefdoms with diamond mines have significantly more attacks and battles during the war. In all

specifications, including those with district fixed effects and controls for 1989 socioeconomic status,

the relationship is large, positive, and statistically significant (Table 2, regressions 4-6). Our data thus

confirms the widely held view that diamonds were related to the local intensity of fighting. Other

geographic controls, including road density, distance to Freetown (the capital) and population density

are only weakly related to both measures of violence. We find that there is no significant relationship

between diamonds and household reports of victimization (Table 2, regressions 1-3). Humphries and

Weinstein (2006: 444) similarly find no relationship between diamond mines and brutality towards

civilians, in data reported by fighting units. It appears that the fighting around diamond mines

primarily involved soldiers and did not disproportionately affect civilians in those areas.

Turning to the other factors, prewar 1989 school enrollment is negatively related to civilian

victimization (Table 2, regressions 3 and 6). This is consistent with the explanation that violence

was higher in areas with poorer public services, possibly due to more severe political grievances in

those areas (Richards 2003), or possibly fewer youth employment opportunities (Collier and Hoeffler

2004). Finally, we find that 1989 average log per capita consumption expenditures are positively

related to the number of chiefdom attacks and battles, consistent with the explanation that lootable

resources attracted armed groups (Collier and Hoeffler 2004). We do not place too much emphasis

on these 1989 data because the sample size falls to just 64 chiefdoms. Yet this is suggestive evidence

that prewar chiefdom socioeconomic conditions may be associated with later violence.

14
IV. Individual level analysis

We document that households that experienced more direct civil war victimization are significantly

more likely to be politically mobilized and engaged in local collective action than other households,

but are no different in terms of assets, religiosity or self-expressed trust postwar. These findings hold

across both the IRCBP and the GoBifo samples, using multiple measures of political mobilization,

and across many specifications, including those with village fixed effects. Before turning to these

results, we first establish that there is no strong evidence of individual selection into victimization,

beyond the systematic targeting of village chiefs mentioned above.

A. Correlates with victimization

We would ideally only use prewar characteristics to predict conflict victimization, but these are

unavailable at the household level. Instead we use postwar data on characteristics that are unlikely to

change as a result of the war, for instance, adult educational attainment and demographic

characteristics.

Both the chiefdom level and village level victimization indexes are positively and

significantly correlated with the household victimization index (Table 3, regressions 1, 2, 4 and 5), as

expected. More importantly for our results, in the nationally representative IRCBP sample there are

no statistically significant relationships between respondent age, gender, or education with the

household violence victimization index across the six specifications, even in the village fixed effects

specification (Table 3, regression 3). The lack of robust correlation between victimization and

observable household characteristics is our first piece of evidence that violence was not

systematically targeted along socioeconomic lines.

In the smaller GoBifo sample, there is no significant correlation between respondent age or

gender, but there is a positive relationship between education and victimization (Table 3, regressions

4-6). As discussed in subsection D, the chiefdoms in the GoBifo sample nearly all contained RUF

15
bases during the war; as the presence of a permanent base made it easier for the RUF to target

community leaders or other opponents, it is perhaps not surprising that selection into violence is

more of an issue in the GoBifo sample than in the nationally representative IRCBP sample.

The one group that disproportionately suffered from war violence were traditional authority

households (i.e. chiefs’ households and extended families). Traditional authority households are

significantly more likely to be victimized across all six regressions. This lines up with many media

accounts of the war, which describe how chiefs were systematically targeted by the RUF in an

attempt to undermine the “corrupt” existing order. We account for this specific type of targeting in

the analysis by controlling for traditional authority households in all later regressions. We also

investigate below whether average chiefdom outcomes are affected by the killing of the local chief.

B. Violence and Postwar Outcomes and Behaviors

We begin with a detailed analysis of two specific individual behaviors: attendance at community

meetings and registering to vote / voting in either of two recent elections.10 We estimate the

relationship between household conflict victimization and these behaviors controlling for observable

characteristics as well as different types of location fixed effects.

Household war victimization is positively and statistically significantly related to respondent

community meeting attendance (Table 4) and also whether the respondent registered to vote / voted

in recent elections (Table 5), in both the IRCBP and GoBifo samples. The point estimates on

victimization are remarkably stable across specifications with district fixed effects, chiefdom fixed

effects, and village fixed effects, and are reasonably large: an increase from zero to one in the

household conflict victimization index (which corresponds to going from no violence to experiencing

all three types of violence) in our favored IRCBP village fixed effects specification is associated with

a 5.7 percentage point increase in the probability of attending a community meeting (Table 4,

10
IRCBP survey respondents were asked if they had registered to vote, while GoBifo respondents were asked if they
had voted. While not exactly the same, these two dependent variables are analyzed together in this section.

16
regression 3), on average village meeting attendance of 70%. The analogous change in household

victimization is associated with a 2.4 percentage point increase in the probability of having registered

to vote (Table 5, regression 3).

Other determinants of meeting attendance and voting behavior that emerge in Tables 4 and 5

are sensible in the Sierra Leonean context. Women are relatively less involved in the political

process – specifically, both less likely to attend community meetings and to vote – while people from

traditional authority households attend more community meetings. Individuals with some education

are more likely to participate in community meetings, but education is only weakly related to voting

behavior. 11

Having established the robustness of the results for two outcome measures, we next expand

the analysis to consider the relationship between conflict victimization and a wider range of postwar

outcomes and behaviors. The specification shown includes village (enumeration area) fixed effects

as well as respondent controls for gender, age, education, and traditional authority household, and

each entry comes from a separate regression (Table 6).

We first find no robust association between conflict victimization and either working for

wages or owning a cooking stove. While the relationship between victimization and owning a radio

is negative in the IRCBP sample, it is not statistically significant for the GoBifo sample (Table 6,

panel A, rows 1, 2, and 3). Taken together, there is no clear evidence that individuals who

experienced more conflict victimization are worse off along observable socioeconomic dimensions

postwar, and we provide further evidence on this below.

In contrast, those who were victims of war violence are very different in terms of political

mobilization and participation in collective action. As before, conflict victimization is positively

related to attendance at community meetings and registering to vote / voting (Table 6, rows 4 and 5).

11
These determinants of voting behavior are broadly similar to data from the U.S., where historically females have
been less likely to vote (Timpone 1998). One difference is that education is positively related to voting in the U.S.,
a finding which does not find strong support in our estimates.

17
Conflict victimization is also robustly positively related to other measures of mobilization, including

membership in a school management committee and membership in a political group (Table 6, panel

B, rows 6 and 7).

Not only is political mobilization greater among those who were conflict victims, but

participation in local collective action is higher as well. The relationship between violence

victimization and participation in road brushing, a crucial locally organized activity to keep bush

paths between villages passable, is positive and statistically significant (Table 6, row 8). This is

finding is important, as it appears to confirm that increased political mobilization is producing more

local public goods, rather than just creating deadlock within communities.12 Recall that these

specifications include village fixed effects, so these collective action impacts are unlikely to simply

reflect greater local needs in war-torn areas. Nor does it seem likely that these collective action

effects just reflect the lower opportunity cost of time among conflict victims, since there is no

significant relationship between victimization and labor market activities (working for a wage or

earning cash, Table 6, row 1).

Political knowledge of the identity of both local government and traditional officials is also

significantly higher among conflict victims, once again with large effects on the order of 9 to 11

percentage points (Table 6, rows 9 and 10), suggesting much greater engagement in local politics.

We next investigate the impact of conflict victimization and leadership for those respondents

who were too young to be prewar community leaders, those 30 years old or younger in 2005 (and 15

or younger in 1990, right before the war).13 Focusing on this demographic group reduces concerns

about selection or omitted variable bias, since these individuals could not have been targeted for

violence as a result of already being community leaders themselves prewar or in the early years of

12
Olson (1984) has noted that increased political mobilization could give rise to small, exclusive coalitions that
lobby for narrowly targeted policies that do not benefit society at large. This type of mobilization could have a
negative aggregate effect.
13
We thank Rachel Glennerster for suggesting this test.

18
the war. It is extremely rare for individuals under 20 years of age to be community leaders in our

data. Thus it is plausible that treatment effects among this subgroup primarily reflect violence

impacts rather than violence selection. This is not a perfect test, since these youths’ households may

have been targeted during the war because their parents were community leaders, for instance, and

leadership abilities may be somewhat correlated across generations. Nonetheless focusing on this

youth sub-sample should considerably weaken the link between unobserved individual prewar

political activism and targeted violence.

Across both the IRCBP and GoBifo samples, conflict victimization effects are positive, large

and statistically significant across political mobilization measures in the youth sample (Table 6,

Panel B, columns 3 and 4). If anything, the point estimates tend to be somewhat larger in magnitude

for youths, although differences across age groups are generally not statistically significant. (Any

differential impacts may also be picking up heterogeneous violence impacts for youth.) The

robustness of the conflict victimization impacts among youths, who were too young to have been

explicitly targeted based on their role as prewar community leaders, is further suggestive evidence

that omitted variables are unlikely to be driving the main results.

The final portion of the individual analysis turns to issues of self-reported trust and

religiosity. This is of interest since the increased provision of public goods reported in Table 6 could

be a result of heightened levels of trust and cooperation across village members (what some would

call “social capital”). The experience of being victimized could plausibly both make individuals less

trustful of outsiders and more trusting of community members. However, the relationship between

victimization and levels of trust for other community members is not statistically significant in the

nationally representative IRCPB sample and the relationship is only marginally significant in the

GoBifo sample (Table 6, row 11). Similarly, there are no discernable differences in the trust of

outsiders among victims and non-victims (row 12). We also find no evidence of a statistically

significant relationship between victimization and postwar religiosity in either sample (row 13).

19
Whatever effects victimization has on political mobilization and collective action do not appear

easily explained by changing levels of trust or religiosity (Table 6, Panel C).

The aggregate measures of conflict intensity, i.e. village level victimization and chiefdom

victimization, are not robustly correlated with respondent behavior. For instance, village level

victimization is never statistically significantly related to respondent meeting attendance and voting,

conditional on their own household’s victimization experience (Tables 4 and 5, regressions 1-2 and

4-5). The relationship between chiefdom level victimization and these outcomes, again conditional

on the household’s own experiences, is sometimes positive and statistically significant (for instance,

in the case of community meeting attendance, Table 4 regressions 1 and 4), but not for most other

outcome measures in Table 6 (e.g., not for voting, Table 5 regressions 1 and 4 – other regressions not

shown). The stronger household level results suggest that violence victimization impacts are mainly

driven by individual experiences and changes in preferences, rather than mainly by broader changes

to institutions and social norms, since these would be reflected in the village or chiefdom level

violence effects, and would affect both the households that directly experienced war violence as well

as other households.

It is noteworthy that differences across households within the same village are so pronounced

given the residential proximity of these households, and the fact that all of them at a minimum

witnessed extreme acts of violence during the Sierra Leone civil war, even if they did not experience

violence directly. The gap we find between those who directly experienced violence and others

provides real-world support for the experimental findings in Simonsohn et al (2006), who show in

the lab that most people’s behavior is far more responsive to their own personal experience than to

their observations of others’ experiences.

C. Other specifications

20
We next investigate the possibility of heterogeneous effects of violence victimization for different

population subgroups. When the explanatory variables for female, education, age, and traditional

authority are interacted with the household victimization index, the coefficient estimates on these

interaction terms are not generally statistically significant for the outcome measures in Table 6. The

point estimate on the interaction of violence victimization with a youth indicator is often positive,

and sometimes marginally statistically significant (as suggested by the findings in Table 6, Panel B,

columns 1-2 versus 3-4), suggesting larger political mobilization impacts among youth, but this result

is not robustly significant across samples, outcomes and specifications (regressions not shown).

It is also theoretically possible that effects differ across different types of victimization, e.g.,

physical assault versus residential displacement, if these experiences are associated with different

degrees of personal trauma. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, no single input into the conflict victimization

index is a more important determinant of postwar behaviors than the others: when the three distinct

components of the victimization index are included as separate independent variables, an F-test on

the null hypothesis that the corresponding coefficients are all equal cannot be rejected at 95%

confidence for any of the outcomes in Table 6, Panel B in the IRCBP sample (results not shown).

D. Robustness to Chiefdoms without Permanent RUF Bases

The main results are robust in a subsample of chiefdoms where the RUF did not establish permanent

bases, and thus where the targeting of civilian violence is likely to be more arbitrary than elsewhere,

as argued above. This analysis is conducted on the nationally-representative IRCBP survey sample.14

The main violence impact estimates remain large, positive and statistically significant for three of

four political mobilization and collective action outcomes, and marginally significant for the fourth

(Appendix Table A1, Panel B), and point estimates if anything strengthen slightly.

E. Robustness to Retrospective Data on the Targeting of Violence

14
The smaller GoBifo sample contains only two chiefdoms without permanent RUF bases (according to the NPWJ
report) and thus is not suitable for this analysis.

21
We next turn to retrospective household roster data to further investigate the targeting of violence.

One specific concern for the identification strategy is that the RUF may have systematically targeted

people who were community leaders (other than the traditional authorities) or otherwise very

involved in local affairs. The analysis in Table 3, while informative regarding selection on

socioeconomic status, does not allow us to rule out targeting on unobserved leadership qualities

orthogonal to individual education.

The retrospective household roster data was collected in the 2005 GoBifo survey, and

contains information on all household members alive in 1990 (before the war). It includes two

variables that allow us to test for targeting on leadership: whether the person was herself/himself a

victim of violence during the war, and whether she/he ever held a community leadership position, for

example, being the leader of a women’s group or a farmer’s group. We estimate the relationship

between having held a community leadership position and victimization.

Ideally, we could observe community leadership positions during the prewar period but

unfortunately, the vague wording of the survey question left it unclear when exactly the person in

question had held a community leadership position, since the wording did not explicitly specify that

we were interested in the prewar period alone. In order to focus more precisely on prewar leaders, in

the next analysis we restrict the sample to those aged 45 or older in 1990.15 These individuals were

over 60 years old by the time of the 2005 survey, making it unlikely that they became community

leaders only after the conflict ended. It appears more likely that any community leadership role was

either before the conflict or in the early years of the conflict. This is not a perfect test, and some

endogeneity (conflict victimization affecting the subsequent likelihood of being a community leader)

remains possible. Still, to the extent the endogeneity bias is positive, it would lead us overstate the

positive correlation between victimization and community leadership, making a finding of a near

15
The results are similar if the sample is restricted to people aged 40 years or older in 1990 (not shown).

22
zero correlation between these two variables even more persuasive evidence that community leaders

were not in fact systematically targeted during the conflict.

Among those aged 45 or older in 1990, the community leader indicator variable is unrelated

to conflict victimization (Appendix Table A2). The point estimate is positive, but small and not

statistically significant. As before, education is also unrelated to victimization during the conflict.

Somewhat surprisingly, being a traditional authority is only weakly related to victimization in this

older subsample, suggesting that younger members of chiefly families bore the brunt of the violence,

although note that standard errors are relatively large here.

V. Chiefdom level analysis

Chiefdom level violence intensity is not robustly correlated with postwar outcomes in terms of

socioeconomic status measures, public goods provision in education, and the number of NGO

projects. Thus war violence appears to have a more decisive impact on preferences and values at the

individual level than it does impacts on local institutions or social norms.

A. Violence and Postwar Outcomes

We find no substantial lingering negative effects of the war on 2004 consumption expenditure levels

using either measure of conflict violence (the average conflict victimization, and the number of

attacks and battles). The specifications include geographic controls, district fixed effects, and finally

controls for prewar 1989 log per capita expenditures (Table 7, regressions 1-3). If anything, areas

that suffered from more violence victimization have slightly higher postwar consumption, although

effects are never statistically significant.16 In contrast, the number of diamond mines in the district is

robustly positively associated with higher local living standards in all specifications.

16
One possible partial explanation for the rapid postwar economic recovery is improved soil fertility: land was often
left fallow in areas that experienced more violence and population displacement, and this could have resulted in
temporarily higher postwar yields. This remains speculative in the absence of detailed soil data, unfortunately.

23
 We next estimate the relationship between conflict and a number of chiefdom level

socioeconomic and public goods outcomes, focusing on a specification that includes all 152

chiefdoms and controls for district fixed effects and chiefdom geographic characteristics. Results are

similar for regressions including the 1989 prewar per capita log expenditure control (regressions not

shown), although the sample is considerably smaller in that case. Neither 2004 log per capita

consumption expenditures (reproducing the Table 7 result), proportion of children enrolled in school,

nor child body mass index (BMI) are significantly associated with conflict victimization in a

chiefdom (Table 8, panel A). Conflict victimization is also not significantly related to local primary

schooling outcomes, including teacher attendance, outside assistance, visits by chiefs, or local

educational attainment levels (Table 8, panels B and C). The one exception is that chiefdoms with

greater civilian victimization were significantly more likely to have successful community

fundraising for their primary schools (row 5). This suggests that conflict-affected chiefdoms have

perhaps slightly better local public goods fundraising three years after the war, consistent with the

individual level findings on local collective action in Table 6.

B. Chiefdom level Robustness Checks

One concern with the chiefdom level results is that chiefdoms heavily affected by the war could have

received increased amounts of NGO and donor funding in the postwar period. Not only do war

affected chiefdoms not get more NGO projects, we find that they may even receive relatively fewer

projects (Table 8, row 9). This could, in part, be due to the fact that some of the most conflict-

affected areas were not declared safe for development workers until late 2002, up to a year or more

after other regions.

A second issue is whether chiefdom level impacts are larger in areas where chiefs were

themselves attacked or killed in the violence. We use the NPWJ report to construct an indicator

variable for this type of violence against traditional authorities, and when this measure is included as

24
an additional explanatory variable we find that the coefficient estimate is never statistically

significant at traditional confidence levels for any of the variables in Table 8 or for those in Table 6

(regressions not shown). Thus attacks on traditional leaders do not appear to be the key drivers of the

political and collective action impacts we estimate, again reinforcing the view that individual level

changes are key.

VI. Conclusion

Using unique nationally representative household data for a postwar society, we find that individuals

who directly experienced violence during the recent Sierra Leone civil war are no different in terms

of postwar socioeconomic status, but they display dramatically higher levels of political mobilization

and engagement, and contributions to local public goods than non-victims. Individuals whose

households were conflict victims are more likely to attend community meetings, more likely to

register to vote / vote, more likely to participate in road brushing (maintenance), and possess more

awareness of local politics. This relationship is remarkably robust across two survey samples and

multiple specifications with different levels of control. While we cannot rule out the possibility that

omitted variable bias is playing some role – in that the types of people victimized tended to be those

who would have become postwar local leaders anyway – there is no strong evidence that more

educated people or community leaders were targeted. ,Additional tests – namely, demonstrating

robustness in the youth subsample and in chiefdoms without permanent RUF bases, where conflict-

related violence victimization is likely to be more indiscriminate or random – argue against the

hypothesis that the systematic targeting of community leaders is driving the results.

Chiefdoms that experienced more intense fighting and abuse of civilians during the conflict

are not relatively worse off three years later in terms of socioeconomic outcomes or child nutrition,

or in terms of education public goods. If anything, there is a slight indication of perhaps somewhat

better local collective action in the more affected chiefdoms, but these chiefdom level results are is

25
not as robust as impacts observed at the individual level. Taken together, it appears that the Sierra

Leone civil war had its largest impacts on preferences and values related to political activity at the

individual level.

The increased local political mobilization we document could potentially help promote future

economic development in Sierra Leone rather than hinder it. For example, we find that contributions

to a pure local public good – road brushing – are higher among war victims. These individual

contributions cannot simply be interpreted as a response to increased local problems, since the village

fixed effects control for any village-wide needs, but rather appear to reflect changes in individual

preferences and values. If this results in better provision of local public goods, it can be thought of as

a positive legacy of the conflict.

The finding that the civil war was transformative resonates with the observations of other

Sierra Leone scholars. David Keen (2005: 170) has claimed that the “experience of displacement

and to some extent the exposure to aid organizations seems to have produced a heightened awareness

among many ordinary Sierra Leoneans”, and among youths in particular. Ferme also discusses the

potential to forge something positive out of the horrors of war: “[Sierra Leonans] have sometimes

turned [social instability] into a creative, though violent, opportunity to refashion themselves vis-à-

vis their own institutions” (2002: 228).

More research needs to be done to understand the legacies of civil wars in Africa, especially

since our empirical strategy only provides evidence on localized conflict impacts rather than overall

national effects. Yet, more speculatively, the finding that war victimization can increase political

mobilization and local collective action may help make sense of the rapid economic growth and

political consolidation many African countries have experienced following protracted civil wars.

The humanitarian costs of civil wars are horrific, of course, but it appears their postwar economic

and political legacies need not be catastrophic.

26
References

Achen, Christopher H. and Larry M. Bartles. 2004. “Blind Retrospection – Electoral Responses to
Drought, Flu and Shark Attacks” Manuscript, Princeton Univ.
Blattman, Christopher. 2006. “The Consequences of Child Soldiering” Manuscript, Univ. of
California, Berkeley.
Brakman, Steven, Harry Garretsen and Marc Schramm. 2004. “The Strategic Bombing of Cities in
Germany in World War II and it Impact on City Growth.” Journal of Economic Geography 4 (1):
1-18.
Castillo, Marco, and Michael Carter. 2005. “Identifying Social Effects with Economic Field
Experiments.” Manuscript, Univ. of Wisconsin.
Carmil, Devora and Shlomo Breznitz. 1991. “Personal Trauma and World View – Are extremely
stressful experiences related to political attitudes, religious beliefs, and future orientation?”
Journal of Traumatic Stress 4(3): 393 – 405.
Collier, Paul and Anke Hoeffler. 2004. “Greed and grievance in civil war.” Oxford Economic Papers
56 (4): 563 – 595.
Conibere, Richard, Jana Asher, Kristen Cibelli, Jana Dudukovich, Rafe Kaplan, and Patrick Ball.
2004. “Statistical Appendix to the Report of Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Report of
Sierra Leone.” Human Rights Data Analysis Group, The Benetech Initiative.
Davis, Donald R., and David E. Weinstein. 2002. “Bones, Bombs, and Break Points: The Geography
of Economic Activity.” American Economic Review 92 (5): 1269-1289.
Drèze, Jean. 2002. “Militarism, Development and Democracy.” Economic and Political Weekly
April: 1171-1183.
Dyregrov, Atle, Rolf Gjestad and Magne Raundalen. 2002. “Children exposed to warfare: A
longitudinal study.” Journal of Traumatic Stress 15 (1): 59-68
Ferme, Mariane C. 2001. The Underneath of Things: Violence, History and the Everyday in Sierra
Leone. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
Green, Donald and Ian Shapiro. 1994. Pathologies of Rational Choice. New Haven: Yale Univ.
Press
Hastings, Justine, Thomas Kane, and Douglas Staiger. 2006. “Economic Outcomes and the Decision
to Vote: the Effect of Randomized School Admissions on Voter Participation.” NBER Working
Paper No. 11805.
Human Rights Watch. 1999. “Sierra Leone: Getting Away with Murder, Mutilation, and Rape.” New
York: Human Rights Watch.
Humphries, Macartan and Jeremy M. Weinstein. 2006. “Handling and Manhandling Civilians in
Civil War: Determinants of the Strategies of Warring Factions.” American Political Science
Review 100 (3): 429-447.
Keen, David. 2005. Conflict and Collusion in Sierra Leone. London: James Currey; New York:
Palgrave.
Miguel, Edward A. and Roland, Gerard. 2005. “The Long Run Impact of Bombing Vietnam”
Manuscript, Univ. of California, Berkeley.
Olson, Mancur. 1984. The Rise and Decline of Nations. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.
Powell, S. et al. 2003.“Posttraumatic Growth After War: A Study with Former Refugees and
Displaced People in Sarajevo,” Journal of Clinical Psychology, 59(1): 71-83.
Reno, William. 1995. Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone. Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge Univ. Press.
Richards, Paul. 1996. Fighting for the Rainforest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone.
London: James Currey; Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann for the International African Institute.

27
Richards, Paul. 2003. “The Political Economy of Internal Conflict in Sierra Leone.” Working Paper
no. 21, Netherlands Institute of International Relations.
Punamaki, Raija-Leena, Samir Quota and Eyad El Sarraj. 1997. “Relationships Between Traumatic
Events, Children’s Gender, Political Activity, and Perceptions of Parenting Styles.” International
Journal of Behavioral Development 21(1): 91-109
Simonsohn, U., N. Karlsson, G. Loewenstein, and D. Ariely. 2006. “The Tree of Experience in the
Forest of Information: Overweighing Experienced Relative to Observed Information” Manuscript
Univ. of Pennsylvania.
Smith, L. Alison, Catherine Gambette, and Thomas Langley. 2004. “Conflict Mapping in Sierra
Leone: Violations of International Humanitarian Law from 1991 to 2002.” No Peace Without
Justice March.
Sparks, Allister. 2003. Beyond the Miracle: Inside the New South Africa. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
Press.
Tedeschi, R.G., and L.G. Calhoun. 1996, “The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory,” Journal of
Traumatic Stress, 9: 455-471.
Tilly, Charles H. 1975. The Formation of National States in Western Europe. Princeton NJ:
Princeton Univ. Press.
Timpone, Richard J. 1998 “Structure, Behavior, and Voter Turnout in the United States” American
Political Science Review, 92 (1): 145-158
United Nations. 1993. Human Development Report 1993. New York: United Nations Development
Program, Oxford Univ. Press.
United Nations. 2004. Human Development Report 2004. New York: United Nations Development
Program, Oxford Univ. Press.
World Bank. 2003. Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy. Washington,
DC: World Bank.

28
 Table 1: Descriptive Statistics

Individual Level Data

IRCBP Sample a GoBifo Sample b
Mean Std Dev Mean Std Dev
Panel A: Household Conflict Victimization
Were any members of your HH killed during the conflict? 0.37 0.48 0.20 0.40
Were any members of your HH injured/maimed during the conflict? 0.24 0.43 0.23 0.42
Were any members of your HH made refugees during the conflict? 0.50 0.50 - -
Did you ever flee the place you were living because of the conflict? - - 0.97 0.17
Were any children from your HH abducted during the conflict? - - 0.23 0.42
Were any women from your HH abducted during the conflict? - - 0.10 0.30
Was your house ever burned down during the conflict? - - 0.39 0.49
Household conflict victimization index (average of above variables) 0.37 0.33 0.35 0.19

Panel B: Postwar Local Institutions Politics

Did you attend any community meetings in past year? 0.76 0.43 0.70 0.46
Did you register to vote / vote in either of the past two elections? 0.97 0.17 0.92 0.27
Are you a member of a School Management Committee? 0.20 0.40 0.34 0.47
Are you a member of a political group? 0.21 0.41 - -
Did you participate in road brushing in the past year? - - 0.72 0.45
Can you correctly name the Local Councilor for this area? - - 0.47 0.50
Can you correctly name the Paramount Chief of this chiefdom? - - 0.77 0.42

Panel C: Postwar Social Capital

Are you a member of a church/mosque group / Have you attended
0.66 0.47 0.93 0.26
church/mosque in the past month?
Do you trust other members of your community / Would trust
community members in hypothetical situations? 0.90 0.17 0.59 0.28
(0 = low trust, 1 = high trust)
Do you trust people from outside your community?
0.65 0.27 - -
(0 = low trust, 1 = high trust)

Panel D: Postwar Socio-Economic Outcomes

Did you do any work for wages / do any activities to earn cash in the
0.08 0.27 0.10 0.30
past year?
Does your household own a radio? 0.55 0.50 0.36 0.48
Does your household own a stove? 0.04 0.20 0.10 0.30

Panel E: Respondent Controls

Female 0.49 0.50 0.48 0.50
Age 41.43 15.52 40.62 16.45
Have you ever been in school? 0.33 0.47 0.25 0.43
Have you ever held a position of traditional authority? 0.12 0.32 - -
Is your household part of a traditional ruling family? - - 0.25 0.43
Household size in 1990 - - 8.56 4.49

Number of Household Observations 5138 2694

Number of Districts ; Chiefdoms ; Enumeration Areas/Villages 13 ; 152 ; 539 2 ; 13 ; 235

29
 Table 1 (continued): Descriptive Statistics

Chiefdom Level Data

Mean Std dev
Panel F: Chiefdom Conflict Victimization
Chiefdom conflict victimization index (Chiefdom average of IRCBP conflict index) a 0.46 0.17
Number of attacks and battles in chiefdom, 1991-2002 c 9.41 9.70

Panel G: Postwar Socio-Economic Outcomes

Average Log per capita expenditure (Leones), 2004 d 13.00 0.44
Proportion of children enrolled in school (ages 5-18), 2004 d 0.64 0.17
Average BMI for children (ages 0-5) d 22.15 8.44

Panel H: Postwar Education and Local Public Goods

Proportion of teachers absent on day of school survey h 0.25 0.14
Proportion of schools receiving financial/ in-kind resources from community h 0.49 0.42
Proportion of schools receiving financial/ in-kind resources from donors/NGOs h 0.49 0.43
Proportion of schools visited by a traditional authority in the last year h 0.76 0.35
Proportion of adults in chiefdom who have ever been to school, 2004 d 0.29 0.16
Total number of NGO projects in the chiefdom e 44.59 42.67

Panel I: Prewar Socio-Economic and Geographic Controls

Average Log per capita expenditure (Leones), 1989 f 8.00 0.72
Proportion of children enrolled in school (ages 5-18), 1989 f 0.26 0.19
Number of diamond mines (per chiefdom) g 2.59 5.49
Road density (km of road per sq km of land area) g 0.09 0.06
Log distance to Freetown (km) g 11.94 0.57
Log population density (people per sq km), 1985 g 3.75 0.75

Number of Districts ; Chiefdoms 13 ; 152

Notes: Sources: (a) Institutional Reform and Capacity Building Project, 2005 Household Survey (b) GoBifo
Household Survey, 2005 (c) No Peace Without Justice Conflict Mapping Report, 2004 (d) Sierra Leone Integrated
Household Survey, 2003-2004 (e) Encyclopedia of Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone Information Systems, 2003 (f) Sierra
Leone Household Survey, 1989 (g) GIS Data, Government of Sierra Leone, 2002 (h) Sierra Leone School
Monitoring Survey, 2005

There are some differences in questions across the IRCBP and GoBifo surveys. First, some questions in the IRCBP
survey were not included in the GoBifo survey and vice versa. Second, the wording of some questions is different.
These are indicated in the table and include: (1) The IRCBP survey asks “Did you register to vote for either of the
last two elections?”; the GoBifo survey asks “Did you vote in either of the last two elections?”. (2) The IRCBP
survey asks “Are you a member of a church/mosque group?”; the GoBifo survey asks “Have you attended
church/mosque in the past month?”. (3) The IRCBP survey asks “How much do you trust members of your
community?”; the GoBifo asks three hypothetical questions that measure trust in different situations, and the
average of those three questions is the overall trust measure. (4) The IRCBP survey asks “Did you work for wages in
the past year?”; the GoBifo survey asks about specific activities that earn cash. Freetown (the capital city) is
excluded from every sample. The IRCBP sample is designed to be nationally representative. Each enumeration
area in the IRCBP sample represents a distinct village because the only major city has been excluded from the
analysis. Due to survey sampling design, there are 117 observations for the 2004 socio-economic variables (source
(d)), 64 observations for the 1989 socio-economic variables (source (f)), and 104 observations for the school survey
data (source (h)).

30
 Table 2: Chiefdom Level Correlations with Conflict Intensity

Dependent Variable: Dependent Variable:

Conflict victimization index Number of attacks and battles
Explanatory Variable (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
-0.0016 0.0010 0.0011 0.39*** 0.33*** 0.36***
Number of diamond mines
(0.0024) (0.0014) (0.0012) (0.076) (0.077) (0.10)
0.11 -0.22 0.42 19.51* 5.07 -25.12
Road density
(0.18) (0.17) (0.46) (10.69) (16.32) (33.62)
0.13*** 0.073* 0.097 -1.94 0.59 4.64
Log distance to Freetown
(0.043) (0.039) (0.084) (1.79) (16.32) (5.93)
0.025 -0.0066 0.071* -0.36 0.23 1.90
Log population density, 1985
(0.026) (0.015) (0.036) (1.30) (1.00) (2.72)
-0.21* 5.00
Proportion children in school, 1989
(0.11) (16.17)
0.011 3.76*
Log per capita expenditure, 1989
(0.030) (1.94)

R-squared 0.22 0.60 0.69 0.070 0.21 0.34

Observations 152 152 64 152 152 64
District fixed effects X X X X

Notes: Additional controls in all regressions include number of chiefdom non-diamond mines and the river density. In regressions (2), (3), (5), and (6) district
fixed effects are included for Tonkolili, Pujehun, Port Loko, Moyamba, Kono, Koinadugu, Kono, Kenema, Kambia, Bonthe, Bombali, and Bo Districts; Western
Area Rural District is the omitted district. Robust standard errors are reported. Standard errors are clustered at the district level in all regressions. Significantly
different than zero at * 90% confidence,,** 95% confidence,,*** 99% confidence. The coefficient on log per capita expenditure in column (6) is robust to
excluding Western Area Rural from the regression sample.

31
 Table 3: Household Level Correlations with Conflict Intensity

Dependent Variable:
Household Conflict Victimization Index
IRCBP Sample GoBifo Sample
Explanatory Variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
0.0074 0.0070 0.0070 -0.0001 0.0004 0.0000
Respondent is female
(0.0078) (0.0079) (0.0081) (0.0067) (0.0068) (0.0070)
0.0003 0.0002 0.0003 0.0000 0.0000 -0.0000
Respondent age
(0.0003) (0.0003) (0.0003) (0.0002) (0.0002) (0.0002)
0.0098 0.011 0.015 0.018** 0.021** 0.019**
Respondent has any education
(0.0094) (0.010) (0.010) (0.0085) (0.0088) (0.0096)
0.033*** 0.034*** 0.028** 0.022** 0.024*** 0.025***
Traditional authority household
(0.012) (0.013) (0.013) (0.0087) (0.0089) (0.0097)
0.0083*** 0.0084*** 0.0086***
Household size in 1990
(0.0008) (0.0008) (0.0009)
0.47*** 0.28*** 0.51*** 0.48***
EA/Village conflict victimization index
(0.040) (0.054) (0.051) (0.054)
0.14*** 0.33***
Chiefdom conflict victimization index
(0.048) (0.10)

R-squared 0.25 0.27 0.37 0.13 0.14 0.24

Observations 5138 5138 5138 2694 2694 2694
District fixed effects X X
Chiefdom fixed effects X X
EA/Village fixed effects X X

Notes: Regression (3) includes enumeration area fixed effects. Regression (6) includes village fixed effects. The enumeration area conflict victimization index
in regressions (1) and (2) is constructed as a simple average of the household conflict victimization indexes in the enumeration area excluding that household; it
has mean 0.37 and standard deviation 0.20. The village conflict victimization index in (4) and (5) is constructed analogously; it has mean 0.35 and standard
deviation 0.088. In the IRCBP sample, a traditional authority household is defined by whether the respondent has ever held a position of traditional authority.
In the GoBifo sample, a traditional authority household is defined by whether that household is a member of ruling family, which does not necessarily mean
somebody from that household has ever held a position of traditional authority. Respondent’s age has been demeaned. Robust standard errors are reported.
Standard errors are clustered at the enumeration area in all the IRCBP regressions and at the village level in all the GoBifo regressions. Significantly different
than zero at * 90% confidence,,** 95% confidence,,*** 99% confidence.

32
 Table 4: Community Meetings and Conflict Victimization

Dependent Variable:
Did you attend any community meetings in the past year?
IRCBP Sample GoBifo Sample
Explanatory Variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
*** ** ** ** **
0.072 0.057 0.057 0.098 0.10 0.12**
Household conflict victimization index
(0.022) (0.022) (0.024) (0.045) (0.045) (0.050)
-0.13*** -0.13*** -0.13*** -0.16*** -0.16*** -0.16***
Respondent is female
(0.011) (0.011) (0.012) (0.017) (0.017) (0.018)
0.0006 0.0006 0.0004 0.0010* 0.0011* 0.0014**
Respondent’s age
(0.0004) (0.0004) (0.0004) (0.0006) (0.0006) (0.0007)
0.042*** 0.060*** 0.061*** 0.054*** 0.044** 0.049**
Respondent has any education
(0.014) (0.014) (0.015) (0.021) (0.021) (0.023)
0.091*** 0.077*** 0.071*** 0.067*** 0.056*** 0.049**
Traditional authority household
(0.015) (0.016) (0.017) (0.021) (0.021) (0.023)
0.0013 0.0010 0.0005
Household size in 1990
(0.0020) (0.0072) (0.0021)
-0.011 -0.004 -0.18 -0.17
EA/Village conflict victimization index
(0.071) (0.066) (0.13) (0.12)
0.49*** 0.67***
Chiefdom conflict victimization index
(0.11) (0.32)

R-squared 0.13 0.18 0.29 0.052 0.074 0.16

Observations 5138 5138 5138 2694 2694 2694
District fixed effects X X
Chiefdom fixed effects X X
EA/Village fixed effects X X

Notes: Significantly different than zero at * 90% confidence,,** 95% confidence,,*** 99% confidence. Robust standard errors are clustered at the enumeration area
and village level in all IRCBP and GoBifo regressions, respectively. The EA/Village conflict victimization index is as described in the notes for Table 3. In the
IRCBP sample, a traditional authority household is defined by whether the respondent has ever been a traditional leader (chief). In the GoBifo sample, a
traditional authority household is defined by whether that household is a member of ruling family, which does not necessarily mean somebody from that
household has ever held a position of traditional authority. Respondent’s age has been demeaned.

33
 Table 5: Voting and Conflict Victimization

Dependent Variable:
Did you register to vote / vote in the either of the past two elections?
IRCBP Sample GoBifo Sample
Explanatory Variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
*** *** *** *** ***
0.026 0.026 0.024 0.10 0.10 0.094***
Household conflict victimization index
(0.0079) (0.0082) (0.0093) (0.026) (0.026) (0.029)
-0.015*** -0.015*** -0.014*** -0.033*** -0.0364*** -0.035***
Respondent is female
(0.0049) (0.0050) (0.0052) (0.010) (0.010) (0.011)
0.0007*** 0.0007*** 0.0007*** 0.0012*** 0.0012*** 0.0013***
Respondent’s age
(0.0002) (0.0002) (0.0002) (0.0003) (0.0003) (0.0004)
-0.0050 -0.0045 -0.0021 0.011* 0.0049 0.0029
Respondent has any education
(0.0052) (0.0054) (0.0057) (0.012) (0.012) (0.013)
0.0048 0.0066 0.0077 0.017* 0.018* 0.022*
Traditional authority household
(0.0061) (0.0064) (0.0072) (0.012) (0.012) (0.014)
-0.0010 -0.0008 -0.0012
Household size in 1990
(0.0012) (0.0012) (0.0014)
0.0093 0.0073 0.076 0.076
EA/Village conflict victimization index
(0.022) (0.021) (0.061) (0.063)
0.012 0.0044
Chiefdom conflict victimization index
(0.037) (0.16)

R-squared 0.024 0.044 0.12 0.033 0.040 0.13

Observations 5138 5138 5138 2694 2694 2694
District fixed effects X X
Chiefdom fixed effects X X
EA/Village fixed effects X X

Notes: Significantly different than zero at * 90% confidence,,** 95% confidence,,*** 99% confidence. Robust standard errors are clustered at the enumeration area
and village level in all IRCBP and GoBifo regressions, respectively. The dependent variable for the IRCBP sample is “Did you register to vote in either of the
past two elections?”, in the GoBifo sample the dependent variable is “Did you vote in either of the past two elections?”. The EA/Village conflict victimization
index is as described in the notes for Table 3. In the IRCBP sample, a traditional authority household is defined by whether the respondent has ever been a
traditional leader (chief). In the GoBifo sample, a traditional authority household is defined by whether that household is a member of ruling family, which does
not necessarily mean somebody from that household has ever held a position of traditional authority. Respondent’s age has been demeaned.

34
 Table 6: Household Level Postwar Outcomes and Conflict Victimization

Household Conflict Victimization Index: Coefficient (s.e.)

Youth Sample
Full Sample
(≤30 years old in 2005)
IRCBP GoBifo IRCBP GoBifo
Dependent Variables (1) (2) (3) (4)
Panel A: Socio-Economic Outcomes
1. Have you worked for wages / Done any activities to -0.0087 -0.048 -0.032 -0.045
earn cash in the past year? (0.014) (0.036) (0.028) (0.080)
-0.058** 0.012 -0.054 -0.047
2. Does your household own a radio?
(0.027) (0.062) (0.062) (0.15)
-0.0004 0.046 -0.016 -0.0023
3. Does your household own a stove?
(0.011) (0.039) (0.029) (0.084)
Panel B: Mobilization and Political Action
0.057** 0.12** 0.13** 0.19
4. Did you attend any community meetings in past year?
(0.024) (0.050) (0.061) (0.13)
5. Did you register to vote / vote in either of the past 0.024*** 0.094*** 0.050* 0.19**
two elections? (0.0093) (0.028) (0.029) (0.092)
6. Are you a member of a School Management 0.062*** 0.014** 0.13*** 0.12
Committee? (0.021) (0.055) (0.049) (0.10)
0.056** 0.050
7. Are you a member of a political group?
(0.023) (0.049)
0.22*** 0.42***
8. Did you participate in road brushing in the past year?
(0.052) (0.11)
0.11** 0.29***
9. Can you correctly name the Local Councilor?
(0.052) (0.11)
0.089* 0.17
10. Can you correctly name the Paramount Chief?
(0.046) (0.13)
Panel C: Trust and Group Memberships
11. Do you trust other members of your community / -0.0020 0.060* 0.0046 0.047
Would trust community members in hypothetical (0.0095) (0.036) (0.024) (0.081)
situations? (0 = low trust, 1 = high trust )
12. Do you trust people from outside your community? 0.018 0.0022
(0 = low trust, 1 = high trust ) (0.015) (0.040)
13. Are you a member of a church/mosque group/ Have -0.031 0.039 -0.0053 0.11
you attended church/mosque in the past month? (0.026) (0.034) (0.066) (0.080)

Observations 5138 2694 1465 756

EA/Village fixed effects X X X X

Notes: Each entry is from a separate OLS regression. Robust standard errors are reported. Standard errors are
clustered at the enumeration area in all the IRCBP regressions and at the village level in all the GoBifo regressions.
Significantly different than zero at * 90% confidence,,** 95% confidence,,*** 99% confidence. The specification is
analogous to regressions (3) and (6) in Tables 5 and 6: additional controls include respondent’s gender, age,
education, traditional authority household and household size in 1990. Enumeration area fixed effects are included
in all IRCBP regressions and village fixed effects in all GoBifo regressions.

35
 Table 7: 2004 Log Per Capita Expenditure and Conflict Victimization

Dependent Variable:
Log per capita expenditures, 2004
Explanatory Variable (1) (2) (3)
0.53 0.42 0.
Chiefdom conflict victimization index
(0.49) (0.39) (0.63)
-0.0054 -0.0063 -0.0037
Number of attacks and battles
(0.0041) (0.0055) (0.012)
0.028*** 0.025*** 0.016**
Number of diamond mines
(0.0032) (0.0042) (0.0069)
0.29 0.80 0.69
Road density
(0.73) (0.56) (1.22)
-0.32** -0.12 0.33
Log distance to Freetown
(0.11) (0.12) (0.21)
-0.096** -0.016 -0.042
Log population density, 1985
(0.041) (0.042) (0.091)
0.034
Proportion children in school, 1989
(0.41)
0.065
Log per capita expenditure, 1989
(0.097)

R-squared 0.22 0.47 0.65

Observations 117 117 55
District fixed effects X X

Notes: Robust standard errors are reported. Standard errors are clustered at the district level in all regressions.
Significantly different than zero at * 90% confidence,,** 95% confidence,,*** 99% confidence. Due to sampling in the
2004 household survey, the sample size is smaller then the full sample of 152 chiefdoms. Additional controls in all
regressions include number of chiefdom non-diamond mines and the river density. In regressions (2) and (3) district
fixed effects are included for Tonkolili, Pujehun, Port Loko, Moyamba, Kono, Koinadugu, Kono, Kenema, Kambia,
Bonthe, Bombali, and Bo Districts; Western Area Rural District is the omitted district.

36
 Table 8: Chiefdom-Level Outcomes and Conflict Victimization

Chiefdom Conflict
Victimization Index:
Dependent Variables Coefficient (std. error)
Panel A: Postwar Socio-Economic Outcomes
0.42
1. Log per capita expenditure, 2004
(0.39)
0.17
2. Proportion children enrolled in school, 2004
(0.17)
3.89
3. BMI for children, 2004
(8.94)
Panel B: School Quality Outcomes, 2005
-0.045
4. Proportion of teachers absent on day of survey
(0.16)
0.62*
5. Proportion of schools receiving financial / in-kind resources from community
(0.33)
-0.11
6. Proportion of schools receiving financial / in-kind resources from donors or NGOs
(0.39)
-0.29
7. Proportion of schools visited by a traditional authority in past year
(0.44)
Panel C: Adult Education and NGO Projects in 2004
0.038
8. Proportion of adults with any education, 2004
(0.083)
-27.89*
9. Total number of NGO projects
(16.66)

District fixed effects X

Notes: Each coefficient and standard error are from a separate OLS regression. Robust standard errors are reported.
Standard errors are clustered at the district level in all regressions. Significantly different than zero at * 90%
confidence,** 95% confidence,,*** 99% confidence.

Due to sampling, there are 117 observations in rows 1-3; 104 chiefdoms in rows 4-7; and 152 chiefdoms in rows 8-
9. The Number of NGO projects in row 9 includes all reported education, health, and agriculture NGO projects.
The specification in these regressions is equivalent to regression (2) in Table 8: additional explanatory variables
include number of attacks and battles, number of diamond mines, road density, log distance to Freetown, log
population density in 1985, number of non-diamond mines, and river density, district fixed effects are also included
(see notes in Table 8).

37
 Figure 1: Location of Sample Enumeration Areas in IRCBP Sample

Notes: The IRCBP sample is nationally representative. There are a total of 539 enumeration areas in the sample.
There are 23 enumeration areas that not included above due to missing GPS coordinates. The capital – Freetown – is
not included in the sample; it is represented by a star on the map.

Figure 2: Location of Sample Villages in GoBifo Sample

Notes: There are 235 villages in the GoBifo sample. The sample covers two districts: Bombali in the North and
Bonthe in the South. The sample is not designed to be representative of either district. There are 51 sample villages
not included above due to missing GPS coordinates. The capital – Freetown – is not included in the sample; it is
represented by a star on the map.

38
 Figure 3: Chiefdom Conflict Victimization Index

Notes: The Conflict Victimization Index is the chiefdom average of three conflict related questions in the IRCBP
survey. Chiefdoms are shaded in deciles according to the value of the conflict index. Data is missing for
Gbonkolenken chiefdom, leaving a sample size of 151 chiefdoms.

Figure 4: Residuals of Chiefdom Conflict Victimization Index

Notes: The residuals in this figure are from a regression of the conflict index on a set of district fixed effects. Thus,
this map shows the variation being used in all of the specifications that include district fixed effects. Chiefdoms are
shaded in deciles according to the value of these residuals. Data is missing for Gbonkolenken chiefdom, leaving a
sample size of 151 chiefdoms.

39
 Appendix Table A1: Chiefdoms with no RUF bases
Household Level Postwar Outcomes and Conflict Victimization

Household Conflict Victimization

Index: Coefficient (s.e.)
IRCBP
Dependent Variables (1)
Panel A: Socio-Economic Outcomes
1. Have you worked for wages / Done any activities to -0.015
earn cash in the past year? (0.021)
-0.068**
2. Does your household own a radio?
(0.036)
-0.0048
3. Does your household own a stove?
(0.016)
Panel B: Mobilization and Political Action
0.11***
4. Did you attend any community meetings in past year?
(0.034)
5. Did you register to vote / vote in either of the past 0.024*
two elections? (0.012)
6. Are you a member of a School Management 0.067**
Committee? (0.029)
0.046
7. Are you a member of a political group?
(0.035)
Panel C: Trust and Group Memberships
8. Do you trust other members of your community / -0.0033
Would trust community members in hypothetical (0.013)
situations? (0 = low trust, 1 = high trust )
9. Do you trust people from outside your community? 0.010
(0 = low trust, 1 = high trust ) (0.021)
10. Are you a member of a church/mosque group/ Have 0.0055
you attended church/mosque in the past month? (0.038)

Observations 2535
EA fixed effects X

Notes: Each entry is from a separate OLS regression. Robust standard errors are reported. Standard errors are
clustered at the enumeration area in all the IRCBP regressions. Significantly different than zero at * 90%
confidence,,** 95% confidence,,*** 99% confidence. The specification is analogous to regressions (3) and (6) in
Tables 5 and 6: additional controls include respondent’s gender, age, education, traditional authority household and
household size in 1990. Enumeration area fixed effects are included in all IRCBP regressions.

40
 Appendix Table A2: Individual “Selection” into Victimization
GoBifo 1990 Household Roster Data – 45 years and older in 1990

Dependent Variable
Explanatory Variable Victim of violence during the conflict
0.0011
Ever held a community leadership position
(0.027)
-0.034***
Female
(0.013)
-0.0007
Age in 1990
(0.0006)
0.017
Ever been to school
(0.024)
-0.0073
Ever held a traditional leadership position
(0.021)

R-squared 0.054
Observations 1796
Chiefdom Fixed Effects X
Mean of dependent Variable 0.07

Notes: Robust standard errors are clustered at chiefdom level. Significantly different than zero at * 90%
confidence,,** 95% confidence,,*** 99% confidence

The data come from the 2005 GoBifo retrospective household roster. A complete roster was compiled for each
respondent’s household in 1990. From that list, a random sample of five people were selected. The data consists of
information on those five people, who all lived in the respondent’s household in 1990 but do not necessarily live
with the respondent today. For reasons discussed in the text, this sample is restricted to persons over 45 years of age
in 1990, which is approximately equivalent to keeping the top quintile of the sample.

The means (std. dev) of the explanatory variables are as follows: Ever held a community leadership position 0.06
(0.24), Female 0.49 (0.50), Age in 1990 55.99 (9.75), Ever been in school 0.11 (0.31), Ever held a position of
traditional authority 0.11 (0.31). Traditional authority includes Paramount, Section, and Village chiefs. Community
leadership position includes women’s leader, youth leader, head teacher, school committee chair, imam/reverend
and master farmer. Victim of violence corresponds to “injured, maimed or killed” during the conflict.

Chiefdom fixed effects for the chiefdom of residence in 1990 are included in all regressions. Results do not change
substantially without the fixed effects. Results do not change substantially if the sample is instead restricted to
individuals over 40 years old in 1990 (not shown).

41
 Data Appendix

Institutional Reform and Capacity and Building Project (IRCBP) Survey, 2005
The IRCBP overall supports the ongoing decentralization in Sierra Leone, working closely with the newly
elected Local Councils to strengthen local government. The 2005 IRCBP survey provides measures of
conflict victimization and measures of local institutional outcomes. The IRCBP survey collected
information on the provision of public services, attitudes and perceptions of local government, as well as
some demographic and socioeconomic variables. The survey was designed to be nationally representative.
Each of the 13 districts is included in the sample. Data is missing for Gbonkolenken chiefdom, which
leaves 151 chiefdoms in all . A total of 539 enumeration areas were surveyed. The sample size for all
individual level regressions is 5,138 individuals.

GoBifo Household Survey, 2005

The GoBifo survey is baseline data for a randomized evaluation of a Community Driven Development
project named GoBifo (in the local lingua franca, Krio, GoBifo means ‘Move Forward’). The GoBifo
project is operating in two districts: Bombali and Bonthe. In these districts, specific villages were chosen
randomly from wards designated for the program. Thus, the sample is not representative at either the
district or the chiefdom level. 235 villages are included in the project. The sample size for all individual
level regressions is 2,694 individuals.

The GoBifo survey includes extensive household and individual data on community participation, social
capital, as well as questions on experience during the conflict. The GoBifo survey also included a
retrospective household roster. Each respondent was asked to name everybody who was living in the
same household as them in 1990. This list was to include people who are no longer living with the
respondent or are no longer alive. From that list, five people were chosen randomly and data was
collected on them. The total sample size is 13,280 individuals. For reasons discussed in the text, the
analysis included in this paper is restricted to individuals who were 45 years of age or older in 1990.

No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ) Report, 2004

A measure of conflict intensity that focuses on troops and soldiers is provided by the number of attacks
and battles in each chiefdom. This measure was coded from the No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ)
conflict mapping report. NPWJ is a non-profit organization that works to promote an effective
international criminal justice system and to support accountability mechanisms for war crimes. The
conflict mapping report seeks to record all violations of humanitarian law that occurred over the entire
conflict period. The ‘factual analysis’ section of the report is organized chronologically by district, and it
reports the chiefdom where each incident occurred, allowing for the construction of chiefdom level war
violence measures. The report is available online at: http://www.npwj.org.

The measure used in our analysis is the number of attacks and battles that occurred within each chiefdom.
An attack is defined to be an incident in which an armed group came into a village briefly, burned houses,
raped or killed residents. It is common for attacks to be part of a larger military campaign and thus for
human rights violations to be committed on a large scale (e.g. “during these attacks RUF forces burnt
down fifty houses, killed nine people, abducted an unknown number of people and amputated a man’s
hand with an axe” p. 189). A battle is defined to be a confrontation between two armed groups (e.g. “On
25 February, the RUF made a successful counter-attack at the rutile mining site, dislodging the SLA
forces based there.” p. 430). Battles need not directly involve violence against civilians, although they
sometimes do. There were 1,995 violent incidents recoded in the NPWJ report, and 1,363 of these
incidents were classified as either an attack or a battle. To give the reader some sense of who the
perpetrators are, of the 968 recorded attacks over 95% were committed by RUF rebels and less than two
percent by CDF. The majority of the battles took place between RUF and CDF troops, with a smaller but
still substantial number also involving the SLA and ECOMOG (West African forces led by Nigeria).

42
Sierra Leone Integrated Household Survey (SLIHS), 2003-2004
Data on chiefdom-level postwar household expenditures, enrollment of children in school, and child body
mass index is available from the 2003-2004 SLIHS survey. The data collection was funded by DFID and
the World Bank, with the intent of providing more complete poverty measures for use in postwar
planning. The data was made available from the office of Statistics Sierra Leone. This national survey
was designed to be representative at the district level. As with the IRCBP survey, the large number of
households in each district allows construction of chiefdom level averages. All of the statistics used in
the present analysis are based on the cleaned sample, which included households located in 117 (out of
152) chiefdoms. Due to sampling strategy, no data was collected for the remaining 35 chiefdoms.

Sierra Leone Household Survey (SLHS), 1989

The 1989 SLHS household survey is, to the best of our knowledge, the only available household survey
data source on prewar conditions outside of Freetown. The household and individual level data is used to
construct measures of average log per capita expenditure and also child school enrollment. Regressions
that include these variables should be interpreted with caution for two reasons. First, there is minimal
existing documentation on the survey, so it is hard to assess data quality. Second, there is a small sample
size: it is possible to construct measures for only 64 chiefdoms. Data collection under-sampled chiefdoms
near Sierra Leone’s national borders, although the precise reasons why are unclear.

Sierra Leone Data Encyclopedia, 2004

The number of non-government organization (NGO) projects located in each chiefdom is reported in the
Sierra Leone Data Encyclopedia, 2004. The Encyclopedia compiles statistics from multiple government
and donor agencies to facilitate information sharing and improve policy making. The Encyclopedia is
produced by Sierra Leone Information Systems and the Development Assistance Coordination Office
(SLIS/DACO) in Freetown. The Encyclopedia contains the WhoWhatWhere Humanitarian Database
which compiles information on the activities of the international NGOs, large national NGOs, and other
donors currently working in Sierra Leone. The measure used in the analysis is the total number of NGO
projects across all sectors – including health, agriculture, and education – from 2001 to 2004.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Data

GIS data provides measures of resources and infrastructure in Sierra Leone. This data is managed and
produced by Sierra Leone Information Systems and the Development Assistance Coordination Office
(SLIS/DACO) in Freetown. GIS coordinates of all government registered industrial mining sites were
combined with firm descriptions from site licenses to determine to location of all registered diamond
mining sites. Non-diamond industrial mining plots, including rutile, bauxite, silver, gold, and ‘assorted
minerals’, are also observed and included as controls in our regression analysis. Because of unregistered
and illegal mining, these measures of mining activity may understate the true extent of diamond mining in
Sierra Leone. However, since the civil war ended, the government of Sierra Leone has made a concerted
effort to document and register all of the mining in the country, as these resources are a major source of
government revenue. GIS data was also used to construct measures of road density, river density, distance
of the chiefdom to Freetown, and the land area of each chiefdom.

Sierra Leone School Monitoring Survey, 2005

This survey was conducted by IRCBP as part of their ongoing evaluation of local public service provision
in Sierra Leone. The school monitoring survey featured two unannounced visits, in which the
enumerators collected information on the number of teachers present, the number of children in school,
whether the school was open, etc. In addition to this surprise component, enumerators also asked detailed
questions regarding schools finances and operations. A total of 288 schools were surveyed, and we use
chiefdom averages. There are 104 (out of a total 152) chiefdoms that have school data.

43