The impacts of climate change on violent conflict risk: a review of causal pathways.

The potential impacts of climate change on violent conflict are high on the agenda of scholars and policy makers. This article reviews existing literature to clarify the relationship between climate change and conflict risk, focusing on the roles of temperature and precipitation. While some debate remains, substantial evidence shows that climate change increases conflict risk under specific conditions.

Cash transfers and mental health in Egypt.

The relationship between poverty and mental health is complex. Conditional cash transfers are seen as an important policy tool in reducing poverty and fostering social protection. Evidence on the impact of cash transfers on mental health is mixed.

The transmission of health across 7 generations in China, 1789-1906.

We study the intergenerational transmission of health using registered data from China between 1789 and 1906. We first document the intergenerational correlations in lifespans, and we find much higher correlations for mothers, compared to fathers. We then compare children born from brother and twin fathers, and the intergenerational transmission from fathers becomes weaker and is likely to be mostly driven by genetic factors.

Institutional mistrust and child vaccination coverage in Africa.

Introduction: Despite considerable improvements in vaccination coverage over the last decade, half of the world's unvaccinated and undervaccinated children are located in Africa. The role of institutional trust in explaining vaccination gaps has been highlighted in several qualitative reports but so far has only been quantified in a small number of high-income countries.

Methods: We matched information on child vaccination status from the Demographic Health Surveys with information on institutional trust from the Afrobarometer surveys at the subnational level.

Vegetation Changes Attributable to Refugees in Africa Coincide with Agricultural Deforestation.

The recent adoption of the Global Compact on Refugees formally recognizes not only the importance of supporting the nearly 26 million people who have sought asylum from conflict and persecution but also of easing the pressures on receiving areas and host countries. However, few countries may enforce the Compact out of concern over the economic or environmental repercussions of hosting refugees. We examine whether narratives of refugee-driven landscape change are empirically generalizable to continental Africa, which fosters 34% of all refugees.

Directions for Research on Climate and Conflict.

The potential links between climate and conflict are well studied, yet disagreement about the specific mechanisms and their significance for societies persists. Here, we build on assessment of the relationship between climate and organized armed conflict to define crosscutting priorities for future directions of research. They include (1) deepening insight into climate-conflict linkages and conditions under which they manifest, (2) ambitiously integrating research designs, (3) systematically exploring future risks and response options, responsive to ongoing decision-making, and (4) evaluating the effectiveness of interventions to manage climate-conflict links.

Climate as a risk factor for armed conflict.

Research findings on the relationship between climate and conflict are diverse and contested. Here we assess the current understanding of the relationship between climate and conflict, based on the structured judgments of experts from diverse disciplines. These experts agree that climate has affected organized armed conflict within countries.

Violence, selection and infant mortality in Congo.

This paper documents the effects of the recent civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo on mortality both in utero and during the first year of life. It instruments for conflict intensity using a mineral price index, which exploits the exogenous variation in the potential value of mineral resources generated by changes in world mineral prices to predict the geographic distribution of the conflict. Using estimates of civil war exposure on mortality across male and female newborn to assess their relative health, it provides evidence of culling effect (in utero selection) as a consequence of in utero shocks.