Poverty and Child Soldier Recruitment: A Disaggregated Study of African Regions

794 characters): In the popular debate, poverty is often identified as the cause of child soldier recruitment. The argument suggests that economic deprivation and few viable life choices push children into recruitment for armed conflict. The poverty argument has rarely been tested systematically, and statistical results are inconclusive. Previous analyses potentially suffer from two methodological problems: ecological fallacy and selection on the dependent variable. We meet these shortcomings in previous tests of the poverty–child soldier nexus by introducing new data that geographically disaggregates recruitment and poverty. Using a cross-sectional research design for all sub-national regions in Africa in the period 1990-2004, we find some evidence that the poorest regions are more subjected to child soldier recruitment. However, other factors, such as the existence of refugee camps seem to outperform the poverty explanation. Characters text (with spaces): 71,470 Characters graphics: 8,800 Characters (total): 80,270