Date of Award
5-1-2022
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Economics
First Advisor
Sylwester, Kevin
Abstract
This dissertation consists of three chapters which as a whole address development issues in Nigeria. These chapters relate to issues on conflicts, rural labor, education, weather shocks, health, and aid. Chapter 1 studied the effects of conflicts on the labor adjustment patterns of rural households in Northern part of Nigeria. I relied on variation in the conflict incidence and employed the use of instrumental variable technique in order to identify the effect of conflict on several household labor variables. The result reveals that conflict within 20km radius of household has led to adjustment of labor away from agriculture to nonagricultural sectors. Also, it has led to substitution of household agricultural labor with hired labor. The demand pressure on hired labor was also found to have increased the wage rates of agricultural hired labor. Chapter 2 investigates the effects of conflicts, depending on the nature, on educational attainment of individuals in Nigeria. Specifically, I looked at how two forms of conflicts with different nature and perpetrators - Boko Haram insurgence and Farmers and Herders conflict – affects educational attainments in Nigeria. I employed the Difference-in-Difference (DiD) technique and found that both forms of conflict hurts completed years of education of individuals that are exposed to them. However, the magnitude of the effects of farmers and herders conflict tends to be larger than that of boko haram insurgence. Chapter 3 studies the effectiveness of World Bank aid projects in reducing the adverse effects of weather shocks on children’s health in Nigeria. The study revealed that children’s’ exposure to weather shocks in their month of birth and in utero have adverse effects on their Weight-to-age- z-score (WAZ) and height-to-age z-score (HAZ). However, the availability of aid projects within 20km radius of these children helps to reduce such negative effects of such weather shocks.
Access
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