The Long-Term Effects of Civil War on Reproductive Health in Tajikistan

Michelle O'Brien , The Ohio State University

The relationship between war and reproductive health is complex and multifaceted. Much of the prior research has focused on contemporaneous effects and human rights violations. In this article, I examine the long-term consequences of the 1992-1997 civil war in Tajikistan on abortion and miscarriages, critical components of reproductive health. Using conflict event data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and individual data from the World Bank, I estimate zero-inflated negative binomial models, while offsetting for the number of pregnancies a woman experienced. In this analysis, I find that war increases abortions and miscarriages. These effects, however, are short-term for abortion, but for miscarriages persist during the decade after the war ended. The findings suggest that while there were behavioral responses that affected individuals during the civil war, the institutional and environmental repercussions of armed conflict continued to affect reproductive health, even a decade after the war ended.

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 Presented in Session 1. Fertility, Family Planning, Sexual Behavior, & Reproductive Health 1