# **1. Introduction**

Conflict and fragile settings are becoming increasingly important contexts in which education assistance is needed. In addition to an increase in conflict in the past decade, the world’s worst conflicts are also beginning to last longer (e.g., World Bank 2017a). Given the priority of humanitarian assistance in many conflict contexts (e.g., OCHA 2019a), there is a risk that poor education during these longer-lasting conflicts will have permanent impacts on later life outcomes of school-aged children and will also have large impacts on the characteristics of the society that emerges from conflict (e.g., UNICEF 2018).

There is a large literature motivating the need to support education during conflict. One set of findings demonstrates that the onset of violence or living in close proximity to violence often has a negative impact on the educational attainment of at least a subset of children, oftentimes drawing findings from household surveys conducted long after conflict has ended.1 However, there is a wide range of conflict-related shocks aside from living in close proximity to violence that can impact access to education (e.g., Chavez et al. 2018), and a more limited but growing set of analyses investigate other types of conflict-related shocks (e.g., Di Maio and Nandi 2013; etc.). More evidence on the effect these other types of conflict shocks have on access to education, and how these effects compare to the effect of living close to violence, would help inform the design and targeting of needed interventions.

This paper seeks to investigate the impact of a series of conflict-related shocks on school attendance in the Republic of Yemen using a novel high-frequency mobile phone survey collected during active conflict. The setting is interesting for a number of reasons. First, the country has been enduring a protracted conflict for over five years that has resulted in a large increase in the share of children not attending school (e.g., OCHA 2020). Second, in addition to the violence from the conflict, there are a number of other conflict-related shocks that have affected the ability of children to attain an adequate education, such as the suspension of salary payments to teachers, the inability to acquire teaching materials, and the substantial increase in the share of households that are financially struggling (e.g., OCHA 2020). And lastly, there are a number of education interventions currently being implemented in Yemen that need up-to-date information on how and where to best support schools and parents (e.g., OCHA 2019a).

This analysis utilizes a monthly mobile phone survey conducted by the World Food Programme (WFP) that tracks school attendance, food security, and access to health care for a panel of households beginning in March 2019.2 The survey initially reached households through random digit dialing in the first month, and then each subsequent month contacted a mix of both previous and new respondents to reach a monthly sample size of approximately 2,400 households that is distributed across the entire country according to population. Prior to the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis in March 2020, the survey reached approximately 13,500 households an average of two times each. The survey is one of the most complete data sources describing the evolution of school attendance during active conflict and offers a unique 1For a survey of the literature, see Blattman and Miguel (2010), Justino (2012), and Verwimp et al. (2019).

2The monthly survey tracking only food security began in August 2015, but an expanded module tracking access to basic services was inserted in March 2019.

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