Across 28 countries in Africa, armed conflict within 25 kilometers of a female primary school student's household is associated with a reduction in schooling of 0.38 years by the time she reaches adolescence – while male students do not experience a similar effect. Xiao Hui Tai of the University of California, Davis, U.S., presents these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on January 15, 2025.
Female education has well-known and wide-ranging social and economic benefits, such as lower child mortality and better labor-market outcomes. Armed conflict disrupts education, but studies that examine gender-specific effects tend to focus on specific conflicts or apply a low-resolution approach.
To gain a broader view with high spatial resolution, Tai combined household survey data from the international Demographic and Health Surveys Program with data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. These data are publicly available and include geo-coordinates of households and conflict events, enabling measurement of local-scale conflict exposure. The dataset consisted of 31,973 violent events alongside responses from 1,938,424 people surveyed from 1986 to 2022.
Exposure to armed conflict up to 50 kilometers away was associated with reduced female education, with bigger impacts at closer distances and at ages 6 and 11. Girls within 25 kilometers of at least one conflict event experienced a reduction of 0.38 years (4 ½ months) of schooling by the time they reached adolescence, while boys did not experience this effect. Further analysis suggested that households near armed conflict may keep girls home from school due to safety concerns and may reallocate resources to boys.
Negative female education effects occurred even with low-intensity conflict. However, girls exposed to consecutive years of nearby conflict appeared to experience later boosts in education that partially made up for earlier reductions, suggesting habituation.
Prior research has firmly established a link between female education and child mortality. The new study suggests that the number of child deaths indirectly caused by reduction in female education from nearby conflict is similar in magnitude to the estimated thousands of yearly child deaths directly caused by armed conflict in Africa.
While further research is needed, this study could inform efforts to reduce conflict and mitigate its effects on education.
The authors add: "We link granular data on conflict events to georeferenced survey data on educational attainment from 28 countries in Africa, finding that armed conflict significantly reduces girls' years of schooling by adolescence. This highlights the widespread and often overlooked toll of conflict on civilian populations."
In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0314106
Citation: Tai XH (2025) Nearby armed conflict affects girls' education in Africa. PLoS ONE 20(1): e0314106. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0314106
Author country: U.S.
Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.
