Operation allied force: unintended consequences of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing on children’s outcomes

Abstract This paper estimates the causal effect of NATO's Operation Allied Force in Serbia in 1999 on health and educational outcomes of children who were in the womb during the bombing. We use entire birth records of the Serbian Statistical Office and educational outcomes provided by the Ministry of Education. The estimation results of the difference-in-differences models, combined with propensity score matching, suggest that children who were in utero during the bombing were 2 percentage points (pp) more likely to be born with a below average (<3,500 g) birthweight and 1pp less likely to be born with high birthweight (≥4,000 g). We find no effects for low birthweight (<2,500 g) and stillbirth outcomes. In the medium-term, we find a statistically significant negative effect of the bombing on grades in mathematics (around −0.9%) and Serbian language (around −0.6%) at the end of primary school, and a 1pp decrease in the preference for/enrolment in academically oriented secondary school. Our results emphasise that war-related bombing has devastating consequences for pregnant women and affected children, and the necessity of policy intervention to prevent conflicts and mitigate their consequences for the most vulnerable part of the population.