When conflict meets political exclusion: Ethnicity, governance, and child mortality

Armed conflict poses a major threat to child health, and growing research highlights how political and social structures may moderate its effects, though the full range of relevant effect modifiers remains incompletely understood. This study examines how the relationship between conflict severity and under-5 mortality rates varies depending on patterns of ethnic political representation. Using data from 99 countries from 2000 to 2017 at the first administrative level (ADM1), it tests the hypothesis that conflict severity has a stronger adverse effect on child mortality where ethnic groups that lack political representation reside. Multivariate linear regression models with ADM1 and year fixed effects provide evidence that lack of ethnic political representation operates as an effect modifier of the conflict-mortality relationship. The results remain robust across alternative measurements, covariates, model specifications, and matching techniques. These findings contribute to understanding how political inequality shapes the health consequences of conflict, with implications for both conflict-affected health interventions and policies addressing political representation.