Poverty and Child Soldier Recruitment: A Disaggregated Study of African Regions Abstract (794 characters): In the popular debate, poverty is often identified as the cause of child soldier recruitment. The argument suggests that economic deprivation and few viable life choices push children into recruitment for armed conflict. The poverty argument has rarely been tested systematically, and statistical results are inconclusive. Previous analyses potentially suffer from two methodological problems: ecological fallacy and selection on the dependent variable. We meet these shortcomings in previous tests of the poverty–child soldier nexus by introducing new data that geographically disaggregates recruitment and poverty. Using a cross-sectional research design for all sub-national regions in Africa in the period 1990-2004, we find some evidence that the poorest regions are more subjected to child soldier recruitment. However, other factors, such as the existence of refugee camps seem to outperform the poverty explanation. Characters text (with spaces): 71,470 Characters graphics: 8,800 Characters (total): 80,270
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Poverty and Child Soldier Recruitment:
A Disaggregated Study of African Regions
Abstract (794 characters):
In the popular debate, poverty is often identified as the cause of child soldier recruitment. The
argument suggests that economic deprivation and few viable life choices push children into
recruitment for armed conflict. The poverty argument has rarely been tested systematically, and
statistical results are inconclusive. Previous analyses potentially suffer from two
methodological problems: ecological fallacy and selection on the dependent variable. We meet
these shortcomings in previous tests of the poverty–child soldier nexus by introducing new data
that geographically disaggregates recruitment and poverty. Using a cross-sectional research
design for all sub-national regions in Africa in the period 1990-2004, we find some evidence
that the poorest regions are more subjected to child soldier recruitment. However, other factors,
such as the existence of refugee camps seem to outperform the poverty explanation.
Characters text (with spaces): 71,470
Characters graphics: 8,800
Characters (total): 80,270
1
1. Introduction
Child soldiers frequently appear in armed conflicts around the world, and the problem is
particularly endemic in Africa. Children are recruited by both government and rebel armed
forces, and often serve in paramilitary, militia or self-defense groups backed by state authorities
which might not conscript children themselves (CSUCS 2004; Achvarina/Reich 2006). In DRC,
for example, child soldiers were serving at the front lines with all armed groups, in some cases
representing up to 35% of the troops (UN 2003). Despite increased efforts of the international
community to combat child soldiering1, children are being recruited and re-recruited for
conflicts. This dire trend calls for action, not only on the improvement and strengthening of the
international norms and programs, but also on the systematic investigation of the root causes of
child soldier recruitment.
The bulk of existing literature on child soldier recruitment consists of non-empirical
academic works and NGOs reports, usually based on interviews with a handful of children who
have been involved in combat. This literature often cites poverty as the cause of child
soldiering. There also exist a few larger systematic surveys of ex-combatants in Africa (e.g.
Blattman 2007 on Uganda; Pugel 2007; Bøås/Hatløy 2008 on Liberia; and Humphreys/
Weinstein 2004 on Sierra Leone). These studies provide unique insights into the individual
motivation and methods of recruitment, but as they focus on single conflicts, they cannot be
used for cross-country comparisons. To our knowledge, Achvarina and Reich (2006) is the
single existing cross-country study comparing different conflicts on the causes of child soldier
recruitment. They found that national measures of poverty cannot explain child soldier
participation. Rather, they argue that refugee camps better explain child soldier recruitment
rates, as children in refugee camps are easily accessible targets for armed forces seeking
recruits. Hence, child soldiers will constitute a larger percentage of belligerent forces where
camps are relatively vulnerable to raids. A methodological caveat here is that this study is based
1 International protocols have been signed, monitoring has been initiated in several countries, and a practice of
naming and shaming was put into place by the UN Security Council.
2
on nation-wide measures which run a high risk of ecological fallacies. For example, poverty is
spatially clustered within countries, and even in societies with low levels of overall inequality,
some regions are richer than others (Buhaug/Rød 2006). Studies that utilize nation-wide
measures of poverty cannot account for sub-national variations. As the level of economic
welfare (as well as child soldier recruitment) might vary significantly within countries, using
national aggregate measures of development, such as GDP per capita, might not reveal the true
impact of poverty on child soldier recruitment. The case of Uganda is an illustrative example.
The conflict in the northern part of the country has been notorious for recruitment of children
into the Lords Resistance Army (LRA). This part of the country is significantly less developed
than the south (Younger 2004). National aggregate poverty measures might therefore obscure
the true relationship between poverty and child soldier recruitment. The map of Uganda (right)
in Figure 1 shows variations in regional rates of both infant mortality (darker regions have
higher infant mortality) and child soldier recruitment (hatched), and the map of Chad (left) also
illustrates regional variations in terms of household assets, where darker regions (relatively
deprived compared to country average) correspond to a large degree the regions in which
recruitment took place (hatched).
[Figure 1 about here]
In this study we test the relationship between poverty and child soldier recruitment using
all sub-national regions in Africa as the units of analysis.2 This allows us to better account for
geographical variations in recruitment, poverty and other factors, and avoids some of the
problems of the ecological fallacy of aggregate measures and selection bias. Whereas
individual-based survey data on combatants, non-combatants and their poverty levels would be
the best source of data for testing the poverty-child soldier recruitment nexus, no such cross-
national data currently exists. We therefore use the next best option of disaggregating by sub-
national region. We introduce new data on regions affected by child soldier recruitment and, by
2 Our spatio-temporal domain covers the African continent, i.e. all the first-level administrative units, 690 in
total, in the period 1990–2004.
3
means of GIS (Geographic Information Systems), we link these data with geo-referenced data
on regional absolute and relative poverty.
We do find some support for a relationship between absolute poverty (measured as
infant mortality) and child soldier recruitment. With regard to relative deprivation (or inter-
regional inequality) we find no significant effect. Regions that are poorer than the country
average are no more at risk of child soldier recruitment than those regions above the country
average. However, the positive relationship between refugee camps and child soldier
recruitment found by Achvarina and Reich (2006) is upheld despite our disaggregated design.
One clear recommendation for the policy community is therefore to aim at protecting refugee
camps from recruitment raids by armed groups.
The remainder of the article is organized as follows. In Section 2 we summarize general
theories of recruitment and armed conflict and offer a literature review on the causes of child
soldiering, focusing on the role of poverty. In Section 3 we present the data and research
design. Section 4 summarizes the results of our empirical tests. Finally, in Section 5, we
conclude and suggest an agenda for future research.
2. Poverty and Child Soldier Recruitment
Most civil wars occur in relatively poor countries, and socioeconomic status has for long been
assumed to be associated with involvement in violent conflict. The direct link between
economic development and domestic peace has proven to be among the most robust findings in
recent large-N country-level studies of civil war (see Hegre/Sambanis 2006). However,
although there is agreement on this empirical relationship there is no consensus on the
theoretical explanation for it. Fearon and Laitin (2003) maintain that GDP per capita is a proxy
for state capacity, indicating that richer states are better able to monitor the population and
conduct effective counterinsurgencies. But, what motivates a person to risk his life in armed
conflict? The recruitment literature brings the poverty argument closer to the micro level by
suggesting that low development provides motivation for violence due to low opportunity costs
as well as a potential for private gains from looting (Doyle/Sambanis 2000; Gates 2002). The
recruitment costs are lower when the alternative means of income are low, in situations of
under-employment and poverty. If people have no other viable means to ensure a life sustaining
4
income, the threshold for joining an army (be it government or rebel) is presumed to be low.
Consequently, Collier and Hoeffler (2004) claim that it is easier to maintain a rebellion in poor
countries than in richer countries.3 The arguments for why poverty and inequality should matter
for child soldier recruitment parallel many of the explanations for recruitment of adults.
However, while inhibiting other qualities than adult soldiers and thus being attractive targets for
certain types of armies, children are thought to be particularly vulnerable to being forcibly
recruited or kidnapped by armies.
Most studies of child soldiers, while disagreeing about the significance of poverty’s
impact, generally admit that it matters to some extent. For example, the earliest comprehensive
book on child soldiers by Goodwin-Gill and Cohn (1994) identifies poverty as a factor without
assigning it a greater value than to other variables. Honwana (2006: 28) considers poverty one
of the main push factors behind child motivation to join armed groups beside migration,
political ideology, or the “mutability of youth”. Stronger statements about the relationship
between poverty and child recruitment have been offered by Graça Machel (1996: 11), who
concludes that “the children most likely to become soldiers are those from impoverished and
marginalized backgrounds” along with the ones that are unaccompanied. Two authors
independently claim that the economic factor is “a particularly strong” explanation for child
soldiering, compared to other explanations that include proliferation of small and cheap
weapons and the changing nature of warfare (Singer 2005: 38, 55; McManimon 1999). Brett
and Specht (2004: 14, original emphasis) argue that poverty “is perhaps the most obvious
common feature of child soldiers generally, which is one of the reasons why it is frequently
identified as the cause of child soldiering”.
There is currently no well-defined consensus in the literature on the mechanisms that
link poverty to child soldiering. To outline different potential mechanisms theoretically, we
distinguish between voluntary and forced recruitment, as poverty could feature as a factor in
3 The opportunity costs of joining a rebellion have been proxied with a variety of indicators in the existing literature. Collier
and Hoeffler (2004) use the rate of economic growth per capita and the secondary school enrolment rate for males. Esty et al.
(1995, 1998) and Goldstone et al. (2005) use infant mortality as a proxy for development and thereby opportunity costs of
potential soldiers. However, all these studies have used aggregate country averages of opportunity costs for recruitment rather
than localized indicators of poverty as indices of recruitment costs, although poverty and wealth tend to be spatially clustered
within countries.
5
both forms of recruitment. Both recruitment forms point in the direction of a positive
relationship between poverty and recruitment.4 Whereas poverty-based economic motivation
(both greed and grievance-based motivation as well as pure struggle for survival) is vital for
understanding voluntary recruitment, forced recruitment is often a question of protective
capabilities, which is often also a function of poverty. In the next two sections we discuss how
poverty may play out in voluntary and forced conscription of children.
2.1 Voluntary Recruitment
Children quite often join armed struggles without pressure being exerted upon them and may
actually look for military groups themselves to offer their services. In one ILO study, 64% of
all former child soldier informants from the DRC, Burundi, Rwanda and Congo reported
joining an armed group on the basis of personal decision as opposed to being directly forced to
do so (ILO 2003: 26).
Voluntary recruitment for armed conflict requires some level of motivation. Goodwin-
Gill and Cohn (1994) propose three different scenarios of how poverty affects the motivation to
join an armed group. In line with the classical literature on the relationship between poverty and
conflict, they label these causal mechanisms as: grievance (“social and economic injustice
motivates adults and children to take up arms, sometimes with a long-term vision of affecting
change”); greed (“to obtain a subsistence wage”), and survival (to get food for the day)
(Goodwin-Gill/Cohn 1994: 23).
The concept of ‘grievance’ is usually based on the logic of relative poverty, or
inequality. Most traditional works on inequality and conflict relate to the theory of relative
deprivation (see Gurr 1970). This premise suggests that while absolute poverty may lead to
apathy and inactivity, comparisons with others in the same society who do better can lead to
frustration and antagonism which again may result in violence to redress inequality. A
continuation of this argument is to see grievance-induced discontent due to a group’s
marginalization as a determinant of mobilization for violent political struggle. ‘Grievance’
factors have been largely dismissed by the large-N country-level studies, which find no link
4 We use this dichotomy here as a useful analytical distinction in the theoretical discussion of mechanisms
leading to child soldier recruitment. In real life situations, the distinction might not be so clear cut.
6
between economic inequality and conflict (Fearon /Laitin 2003; Collier/Hoeffler 2004). Østby
(2008), however, argues that such dismissal of grievance factors may be premature, because the
above studies address economic inequality between individuals while ignoring inequalities
between groups. Case studies suggest that what matters for conflict are so-called ‘horizontal
inequalities’, or inequalities that coincide with identity-based cleavages (Stewart 2000, 2002).
In brief, as conflict as usually fought between groups, not individuals, inequalities based on
cultural cleavages may facilitate recruitment and mobilization for armed conflict.
Andvig (2006) argues that grievance as motivation for joining a rebellion works in the
same manner for both children and adults. Children tend to equate violence with power and the
reasons given for enlistment include not only peer pressure and opportunity to engage in
looting, but also political commitment and ethnic loyalties (Stewart/Boyden 2001). For
example, if a child belongs to a group or region which is relatively economically deprived and
where schooling opportunities are low, this may lead to frustration and a sense of unfairness
which in turn may influence the child’s willingness to become a soldier in order to try to change
the status quo. Furthermore, identity-based groups – the ones that share the same ethnic,
religious or regional affiliation – also tend to have stronger group cohesion than other types of
groups (see e.g. Guichaoua 2006; Stewart 2000, 2002). Coupled with the evidence from child
psychology and empirical studies about children’s “greater tendency towards altruism and
bonding to a group” (Andvig/ Gates 2006: 7; Harbaugh/Krause 1999), the strong cohesion of
identity-based groups is an additional attractive factor in the decision of children to join a rebel
group. Arguably, social pressure and ideological propaganda can also persuade children to
enroll with armed groups (ILO 2003: 25). This corresponds well to Wessels (1998: 639) who
argues that “issues of identity, nationalism, and ideology may also loom large” in children’s
decision to participate in armed struggle.
Like adults, children can also be driven by greed. Rebellions provide opportunities to
loot and get access to financial resources, including salaries for soldiering. Gates (2002: 128)
argues that “faced with dismal conditions at home, involving poverty, boredom, or, in some
areas, no family” children might have fewer reservations to join an armed group. In other
words, children might voluntarily join armies due to perceived prospects that look brighter than
poverty or boredom, which may in part stem from lack of educational opportunities. Goodwin-
Gill and Cohn’s (1994) third scenario, the motivation of survival – that is the decision to join an
7
army as the best option for a child to secure food or basic security – can be hard to distinguish
from a greed drive. Orphaned children may be particularly susceptible to the greed motivation
as the groups of armed adults might become the only substitute for parental care in terms of
food provision, perceived security guarantee, and a mere establishment of a missing category of
an adult-child relationship in an orphan’s life (Brett/McCallin 1996; Singer 2005; UNICEF
2002). At the same time, studies with aggregate variables using national measures of orphans
did not find that particular variable to be significant in explaining the variation in child soldier
rates across different African conflicts (Achvarina/Reich 2006). 5
Still, parental protection might not be a guaranteed condition even for children with live
parents, with the most extreme cases being parents who voluntarily give away their children to
rebels due to greed or ideological motivations, often because a family member is already in the
military (ILO 2003: 36). Impoverished parents sometimes send their children to armed groups
in exchange for minor soldier's wages that go directly to the family (Machel 1996: 12). Such
‘volunteering’ includes “parents who encourage their daughters to become soldiers if their
marriage prospects are poor” (Machel 1996: 12). Alternatively, children can become de facto
child soldiers if the whole family moves with armed forces for economic reasons, or they can
be recruited because a family member is already in the military.
Why would a military organization recruit children as soldiers? Army commanders in
Africa have reported several reasons, such as children being easily manipulated and efficient
cheap fighters, with a better performance of certain tasks such as scouting (ILO 2003). From
the perspective of commanders and army leaders, recruiting underage soldiers can decrease the
cost and ease of recruitment, particularly of impoverished children. With respect to voluntary
recruitment, any army that wants to conscript soldiers needs to be able to offer some level of
benefits, be it food or payment. Gates (2002) sees the participation constraint as essentially a
comparison of the utility offered by a rebel group (or possibly any army) compared to some ex
5 Ideally, we would have preferred to have tested whether regions with larger numbers or ratios of orphaned
children are more prone to child soldier recruitment. Unfortunately, however, such data seem to be non-existent on
the sub-national level. One potential proxy for orphan rates could be regional HIV/AIDS figures for which the best
source seems to be USAID’s HIV/AIDS Surveillance Database (http://hivaidssurveillancedb.org/hivdb/).
However, very few countries have reliable data broken down to regional figures.
8
ante outside option. He argues that children offer a higher possibility for rebel groups to meet
the so called reservation level of benefits that a recruit demands in order to join, as this level is
proposed to be lower for children than adults. In addition, children might mobilize only for a
promise of future delivery of benefits. For example, in Liberia, children from marginalized
economic groups were promised free access to education after the end of the war. This promise
was enough to convince some of them to join Charles Taylor’s armed forces.6 In DRC and
Congo, former child soldiers have also reported that they joined to receive payment or a job
after the war (ILO 2003: 30). The prospect of even marginal payment is a strong incentive for
children to enlist in situations when their parents are missing or finding it hard to provide basic
food security. Hence, child soldiers mean cheap labor for rebels with limited resources. It is
quite intuitive to build on this argument and suggest that poorer children offer even cheaper
labor and thus better alternatives for recruiters, especially the ones that abstain from forced
conscription.
2.2 Forced Recruitment
The above reasoning has pertained only to voluntary recruitment of child soldiers. Often,
however, participation is forced at gunpoint. This practice was widespread among LRA in the
northern Uganda (Blattman 2007) and RUF in Sierra Leone (CSUCS 2001). ILO found that
about 21% of the child soldiers sampled in four African countries (Burundi, Congo, DRC,
Liberia) reported to have been abducted, and 15% forced (ILO 2003).7 How can poverty matter
when children are taken by force? We argue that the less privileged will typically have the least
resources to defend their families and children, and hence provide an easy prey. From the
recruiters’ point of view, poorer communities typically have less means of protection (due to
insufficient infrastructure, economic resources, or lower priority of government protection
policies) and therefore might be more attractive destinations for recruitment. Singer (2005: 4)
7 This information was obtained during personal interviews by one of the authors with Liberian former child
soldiers. 7 By abduction the ILO report refers to “situations in which children have been taken forcibly or under threat of
arms”; whereas forced recruitment is defined to refer to “cases in which the child did not have a choice. This could
be because of moral pressure or the obligation to enlist.”
9
argues that targeted children are “usually from special risk groups: street children, the rural
poor, refugees, and others displaced”. He explains this logic by introducing the concept of
“efficient recruiting sweeps” pertinent to these four special risk groups in particular. Some
literature by practitioners also notes that “in all conflicts, children from wealthier and more
educated families are at less risk” of forced recruitment as they are either left “undisturbed” or
“released if their parents can buy them out” or “sent out of the country to avoid the possibility
of forced conscription.” (Machel 1996: 12). In other words, defense capabilities or protection
provision can be intimately linked to absolute poverty and increase likelihood of recruitment
among the poor and also linked to relative poverty between sub-national regions, where the less
well off regions are more likely recruitment grounds for child soldiers.
This can seem contrary to the argument of Ethan Bueno de Mesquita (2005) that
terrorist operatives have relatively high educational attainment and economic opportunity.
Bueno de Mesquita convincingly argues that whereas individuals from societies’ worst-off
socioeconomic groups are most likely to join a terrorist organization, the terrorist organization
screens the volunteers for quality and target the most competent, richer and better educated
candidates. However, unlike terrorist organizations that have a need for masterminds who are
more likely to succeed at the demanding tasks required of a terrorist operative, we do not
believe that the same logic applies for the strategic recruitment of child soldiers for armed
conflict. A typical African conflict does not require particularly skilled operatives. Child soldier
recruitment mainly takes place in under-developed countries, characterized by limited counter-
intelligence that can often be performed by children and prevalence of primitive but effective
AK-47 rifles easily handled by children. Under such conditions it should be more strategic for
African rebel leaders and commanders to recruit a large number of children. As argued by
Blattman (2007: 1): “rebel leaders have an incentive to recruit any civilians that are expected to
yield some military benefit”. Furthermore, indoctrination and disorientation is likely to be more
successful with poor low-educated children.
---
In the above theoretical framework we have discussed the impact of both absolute and
relative poverty. In sum, the absolute level of poverty is expected to affect both voluntary and
forced recruitment of child soldiers either because of the lack of alternative viable survival
strategies or due to negligible defense against forced recruitment. From the perspective of
10
recruiters, the poorer the children, the easier it is to recruit them, either by force or voluntarily.
This leads to our first hypothesis:
H1: Higher levels of absolute poverty in a region increase the likelihood of recruitment of child
soldiers.
Whereas the previous literature on child soldiers has focused almost exclusively on the impact
of absolute poverty, we argued in the above discussion that relative poverty (deprivation) could
also play a role regarding voluntary as well as forced recruitment of child soldiers. If children
are motivated and mobilize to redress economic grievances, the relatively poor should also,
more often than the relatively privileged, engage in child soldiering, especially if the relative
deprivation is a result of systematic discrimination between particular identity groups, such as
ethnic or regional groups. Furthermore, the logic of forced conscription of children in poor
communities can also be viewed as an outcome of external processes that come as a result of
relative poverty. In other words, if a government or rebel group wants to recruit children by
force, the rational choice would arguably be to target regions that fall below the country
average, and the more the region falls below this average the more at risk the region would be
of being seen as a good recruitment ground. In line with this reasoning we propose the
following hypothesis:
H2: The relatively poorer (more deprived) regions in a country will be more at risk of child
soldier recruitment than the ones that are relatively better off.
3. Data and Research Design
Since civil wars are often quite local, nation level indicators to explain either the location of
conflicts or child soldier recruitment might therefore often become misleading or, at best,
irrelevant. Hence, the present study is among the emerging efforts at geographically
‘disaggregating the study of civil war’, or investigating the causes of conflict below the national
level (see e.g. Buhaug/Lujala 2005; Buhaug/Rød 2006; Hegre/Raleigh 2005; Østby et al. 2008;
Raleigh/Urdal 2005). Some regions of a country might experience more recruitment than
11
others, and the causal factors used to explain this recruitment also vary geographically. As the
next-best option to individual survey data8, we rely on indicators of localized socio-economic
status at the regional level. Our units of analysis are sub-national regions in Africa representing
first-level administrative units (regions/provinces) according to ESRI’s (1998) definition. The
total number of observations in the dataset adds up to 690 regions in 52 countries (i.e. all the
sub-national regions in Africa in the period 1990–2004). Due to some missing observations on
certain variables the tests range from 354 and up to a maximum of 688 observations.
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) software, allows us to combine spatial data on
regional welfare and child soldier recruitment.
3.1 Dependent variable: Child Soldier Recruitment
Our dependent variable, child soldier recruitment, is dichotomous, coded as 1 if there were
reports of child soldiers recruited in the region in the period 1990–2004, and 0 if we could not
find any such reports.9 We cover recruitment of voluntary and forced nature from home and
displaced (including refugee) communities of children alike.10 We rely on the existing
operational definition of child soldiers from the United National Children’s Fund (UNICEF,
undated) which is used in the field to collect the data. According to this definition, child soldier
is “any child—boy or girl—under 18 years of age, who is part of any kind of regular or
irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity, including, but not limited to, cooks,
porters, messengers, and anyone accompanying such groups other than family members”
8 No such comparative geo-referenced survey data across cases currently exists. 9 Ideally, we would like to have a scale measure of the magnitude of the recruitment or a ratio variable of child
soldiers to the total number of soldiers, but due to data constraints this has not yet been possible. Reliable time-
series data would also have been preferred due to potential endogeneity problems regarding the relationship
between IMR and child soldier recruitment. However, since IMR figures refer to the death of infants (under 1 year
of age), and child soldiers refer to older children, this problem should at least be less serious. Although IMR
figures are of course likely to be higher resulting from conflict (as would be the case with any other measures of
poverty), it is not obvious that such figures should be higher in conflicts including child soldiers than in conflicts
where child soldier recruitment does not occur. 10 It is not possible to distinguish between forced or voluntary recruitment in the analyses. For most of the
observations it is not clear what type of recruitment was prevalent, and in many instances both types of recruitment
were going hand in hand by the same armed groups or forces, and a clear distinction can be hard to establish.
12
(UNICEF, undated: 4). One controversy surrounding UNICEF’s definition deals with the
established benchmark of 18 years old as a minimum age for recruitment. The point is often
raised by many observers that this number is driven by international conventions based on
western norms and does not make sense in the context of African countries where, according to
some, the age of adulthood is often set at a much lower level and in some countries hardly
reaches 15 years old. Still, due to a lack of available data on recruitment broken down by age,
we use the date collected according to the UNICEF definition.11
Out of the 690 regions in our sample, nearly 42.9% (296 regions in 28 countries)
experienced conflict in the 1990–2004 period, and 10.6% (73 regions in 17 countries)
experienced child soldier recruitment. Of these 73 regions, 66 were in a conflict zone and 7
regions were not. The data on recruitment is coded based on systematic evaluations of country
reports of child soldiers issued by NGOs, international organizations, governments, academics,
and even military organizations.12 The map in Figure 2 shows which regions experienced child
soldier recruitment (hatched) and conflict (shaded).
[Figure 2 about here]
3.2 Absolute and Relative Poverty
To test our two hypotheses we need to operationalize two different concepts of poverty:
absolute and relative poverty. We use data from two different sources to generate these
measures. The first is geo-referenced disaggregated data on infant mortality rates (IMR) from
the CIESIN data project at Columbia University, which covers 52 African countries.13
According to the norm, CIESIN defines regional, annual IMR as the number of children who
die before their first birthday for every 1,000 live births, i.e.
11 Another problem with the UNICEF definition of child soldiers is that it does not distinguish between different
tasks that children are taken to perform. However, in our article this distinction is not critical as our poverty
argument is mostly supply-based and deals with the question of vulnerability of certain groups of children for
recruitment with the demand for children by armed groups viewed as already given. 12 The coding and geo-referencing of this information has been done by the authors. IMR rates for southern
Sudan have been made available by Theisen and Brandsegg (2007). 13 CIESIN online at: http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/povmap/ .
13
1000*yearin births Liveyearin 1 ageunder Deaths
=IMR . Infant mortality has been used as
an alternative to GDP per capita or similar measures in quantitative studies in the conflict
literature (see e.g. Esty et al. 1995, 1998; Goldstone et al. 2005; Urdal 2006) and elsewhere, as
the two are typically very highly correlated and believed to capture the same phenomenon of
general development. One criticism of using IMR has been that as countries cross a certain
threshold of wealth there is often little variation on such a basic measure of development as
infant mortality. However, as we are investigating Africa this is less problematic than in other
studies, as the countries in question are in large part defined as low-income. Also, IMR is
theoretically closer to the relationship we want to test, as it better captures poverty-related
factors identified that lead to child soldiering, such as food shortages. The map in Figure 3
shows the coverage of the CIESIN data of infant mortality rates overlaid with child soldier
recruitment (hatched). A simple visual investigation of this map reveals what seems to be a
pattern of the poorer regions (i.e. the higher IMR figures) experiencing more child soldier
recruitment, than the richer regions. However, this relationship will be tested further in the
statistical analysis.
[Figure 3 about here]
Our second data source used to construct measures of absolute and relative poverty is
geo-referenced information from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) from 22 African
countries14 conducted during the period 1986-2001. In a DHS, a sample of households is
selected throughout the entire country, and women between the ages of 15 and 49 are
interviewed about health, nutrition, household welfare and other issues. The sample design is a
probabilistic two-stage sample, in which enumerated areas (EAs) are randomly selected with
probability proportional to their size. Several DHS Surveys include detailed information about
the geographical location of each EA. This allows us to couple local-level socioeconomic
information from the surveys with the geographically recorded data on the location of child
14 These countries are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire,