Heterogeneity in the long term health effects of warfare

•We analyze the heterogeneous effects of growing up during war on adult height.•We explore region-by-cohort variation in WWII destruction in Germany.•Childhood exposure to warfare leads to 2 cm lower height in adulthood.•Girls and individuals from less privileged families suffer the most.•Wartime children who lost their parents during war have lower height as adults.

This paper estimates the long-term heterogeneous legacies of exposures to war in utero and during early childhood on height in adulthood. Using a novel dataset on the regional WWII destruction in Germany, combined with the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we find that individuals who experienced warfare in utero and during childhood are an average of 2 cm shorter as adults, suggesting that the negative scarring effect of WWII dominated the positive effect coming from a selection. Among war survivors, children from less privileged families who resided in highly destroyed regions, particularly girls, suffered the greatest health consequences of warfare. Our analyses also show that wartime children who lost their parents during the war years are an average of 1.3 cm shorter as adults. However, the father's conscription during WWII had no long-term effect on adult height.