Demography and War –Research on Population and Health in Contexts of Armed Conflict

As the world focuses its attention and resources upon the violence and suffering caused by the Russian war in Ukraine, it is an opportune time to hone research techniques and disseminate rigorous research findings uncovering the significant and enduring toll of war upon health and demography. Globally, millions live in the wake of war, forced to cope with the death, destruction and upheaval of violent conflict, experiencing worsened health, asset and income loss, and infrastructure damage that often exacerbates extant livelihood and health challenges tied to persistent poverty. Moreover, demographic and life course processes reveal that war’s impacts upon individuals and societies are deep, enduring and indelible.

The studies within this issue utilize diverse methodological approaches to document the pervasive, complex, and impactful nature of armed conflict on demographic behaviors and health outcomes across the global landscape. They reveal new insights into the legacies of armed conflict on immediate outcomes and future implications, including through fertility (Tran and Minh), mortality (Karlinsky and Torrisi), reproductive health (Le Voir; Svallfors), mental health and aging (Heuveline and Clague; Akbulut-Yuksel et al), and educational attainment (Korinek et al. In a world where war-related migration, mortality and morbidity are pervasive, conflict often intersects with, interrupts, or derails, development to influence a wide range of demographic behaviors. To this point, authors offer novel social demographic analyses of violence across settings of conflict and unrest, including how responses to violence intersect with gender, class, and other forms of structural violence (Jampaklay et al; Williams et al; Koning). These patterns of organized violence and the scars it can leave on health and wellbeing pose many questions of “what now?”, including decision making among Ukrainians now displaced, as examined more closely in another study (Buckley).

As editors, we have compiled this scholarship on armed conflict–past and present–to advance theoretical development and policy formation addressing post-conflict recovery and reconciliation, and interventions with diverse survivors. We also maintain that social demographers can bring to bear a set of theoretical lenses and empirical tools that are ideally situated to advancing understanding of armed conflict’s social, health and demographic consequences. While development economists have made impactful contributions in this area, evinced by the work of Collier, Bruck, Blattman, and others –social demographers have yet to develop a cohesive, significant corpus of work that reveals the scale and extent of conflict’s significance for mortality, morbidity, migration and demographic behaviors and dynamics on a global scale. Building upon a foundation set by a handful of leading scholars in the field (e.g. Urdal, Ramirez and Haas 2021; Kraehnert et al. 2019; Castro Torres and Urdinola 2019; Torrisi 2020), the special issue will highlight research that exposes post-conflict demographic patterns related to migration, fertility, mortality, morbidity—both short and long-term.

Collectively and individually, the contributions to this special issue are innovative in their application of data and methods within conflict- and post-conflict settings. This marks a valuable contribution to the field in light of the limited statistics and data-gathering capacity which have long characterized contexts of armed conflict (Buvinic et al. 2013). Furthermore, the manuscripts submitted for this special issue showcase research on armed conflict that is generative of theoretical insights. Development economists have characterized the ill consequences of war as “development in reverse,”(e.g., Buvinic et al. 2013), with conflict-affected countries prone to “conflicts traps” of rising poverty and slowed GDP growth (Collier et al. 2003). Nuanced analyses of conflict-affected populations can illuminate mechanisms of influence, and the heterogeneous impacts of war over different time frames and geographies. These insights are needed to direct policy formation and interventions to address inequality and recovery in post-conflict settings. We know that conflict’s consequences are not uniformly negative –exposure to conflict violence can awaken community engagement, political activism and create social capital (Bellows and Miguel 2009, Blattman 2009). Social demographic research can further illuminate how to harness positive social and economic dynamics in the aftermath of war. Finally, the contributions and editorial introduction of the special issue will point toward new approaches to data collection and analysis that better measure and estimate armed conflict’s social, health and demographic consequences. These tools and insights will be invaluable as demographers and population scholars seek to understand armed conflict, past and present, has persistently influenced global public health and demographic transitions.