this indicator is also reflective of the prenatal, birth and early neonatal conditions, with earlier neonatal deaths being more closely associated with the pregnancy environment.<sup>28</sup> The long span and high frequency of the data allows for the variability in the exposure to violence during gestation. In this study, the gestation period starts at the conception date and ends at birth. To estimate the beginning of the gestation period -- the date of conception-- I subtract the pregnancy length from the date of birth.<sup>29</sup> The pregnancy length is reported in the Colombian DHS and corresponds to the time elapsed between the first day of the last normal menstrual period of the woman and the delivery date.<sup>30</sup> Since conception usually occurs about two weeks after the last menstrual period, I subtract two further weeks from the reported pregnancy length to more accurately capture the gestation period.<sup>31</sup> This period is divided into trimesters, which are calculated by sequentially adding three-month intervals from the estimated conception date until birth.<sup>32</sup> The last trimester can thus be shorter than three months.

Exposure to violence in utero is reported in Table 1. Of pregnancies ending in a live birth, 3.29% were exposed to a violent attack against civilians at any point during gestation. In each trimester about 1% of fetuses were exposed to an attack, with a slightly higher share exposed in the first trimester (1.31%). Most pregnancies were exposed only once; less than 7% of the exposed pregnancies experienced two attacks and none were exposed more than twice. Because of this, in the analysis I use a dummy variable of exposure.<sup>33</sup>

# [Table 1 here]

# **C. Specification**

I exploit the geographic — by municipality — and temporal variation — by date of occurrence and gestational age — of violent attacks against civilians to identify the effect of violence on newborn health. One key challenge to the evaluation strategy is the influence of municipal characteristics on newborn health. A particular concern is the correlation of violence with poverty and with a weak local state, on the one hand, and between the latter two and newborn health, on the other, for instance through a lower state capacity to provide adequate health services<sup>34</sup> or via poor maternal nutrition (Amarante et al. 2016). Poor economic conditions can lead to conflict as they lower the opportunity cost for young unemployed men to take up arms, limit the capacity of governments to repress insurgencies, and exacerbate grievances between the state and its citizens, and across groups within a country (Collier and Hoeffler 2004; Fearon and Laitin 2003; Miguel,

> 28 In the sample, 80% of neonatal deaths occur by the first week of life.

> 29 When there is no information about pregnancy length, one could subtract 9 months (or 40 weeks) from the date of birth. However, this assigns all births the same gestation length, as if they all reached full term. This is especially problematic in the case of pre-term births, as these pregnancies would be assumed to start much earlier than they actually did, resulting in a misrepresentation of their exposure to violence during the early part of the pregnancy.

> 30 It is reported in months in the 2005 DHS, and in weeks in the 2010 and 2015 rounds, where months are multiplied by 4.3 to calculate the length in weeks.

> 31 Although because both the date of birth and the pregnancy length are reported by the mother in the survey, there can be some recall error leading to imprecision in its determination.

> 32 To account for different dates of birth within a month, the month of birth corresponds to the concurrent one if the birth was at the beginning of the month (i.e. before the 15th day); if the child was born after the 15th, it corresponds to the following month.

> 33 Supplementary analysis available upon request has an analysis based on the number of victims.

> 34 In Colombia, the provision of health services is a core government function devolved to municipalities.

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