Early-life conditions and child development: Evidence from a violent conflict

•I investigate the effects of early-life violence exposure on human capital formation.•I focus on a wide range of outcomes, including cognitive and non-cognitive measures.•Violence is measured using sharp variation in the timing and severity of massacres.•These terrorist attacks reduce child height-for-age and cognitive test scores.•The timing of exposures matters and differs by type of skill.

This paper investigates how the exposure to violent conflicts in utero and in early and late childhood affect human capital formation. I focus on a wide range of child development outcomes, including novel cognitive and non-cognitive indicators. Using monthly and municipality-level variation in the timing and severity of massacres in Colombia from 1999 to 2007, I show that children exposed to terrorist attacks in utero and in childhood achieve lower height-for-age (0.09 SD) and cognitive outcomes (PPVT falls by 0.18SD and math reasoning and general knowledge fall by 0.16SD), and that these results are robust to controlling for mother fixed-effects. The timing of these exposures matters and differs by type of skill. In terms of parental investments, I find some evidence that parents reinforce the negative effects of violence by increasing their frequency of physical aggression.