that assess how school attendance and other education outcomes respond to conflict-related shocks in real time. Yemen is no exception, where the poor security situation (e.g., Sundberg and Melander 2013), the budgetary problems of the government and the Central Statistical Organization (e.g., World Bank 2017b), and the significant upheaval in population movement since the last census conducted in 2004 all make it very difficult to conduct traditional household surveys (e.g., TFPM 2017). Furthermore, given the large and frequent shocks that could potentially affect school attendance (e.g., Tandon and Vishwanath 2020), high-frequency data collection would be necessary to differentiate between potential mechanisms affecting school attendance.

Given the substantial constraints on traditional data collection and the need for high-frequency data, we turn to rare, non-traditional survey data. This paper utilizes the most geographically complete survey covering Yemen following the start of the conflict- the mobile Vulnerability and Assessment Mapping Survey (mVAM) conducted by the WFP. The monthly survey began in August 2015 and has been conducted nearly every month since. However, the survey was originally focused on food security, and only began incorporating school attendance in March 2019 (e.g., WFP 2019b). The data collected in the monthly survey since March 2019 provide a rare opportunity to analyze schooling decisions in an active and volatile conflict, with important implications for governments, and humanitarian and development organizations.

On average, each mVAM interview takes about 15 minutes to complete. The survey is conducted via mobile phone and respondents are reached via random digit dialing. The survey is stratified by governorate/capital city, where potential respondents continue to be contacted until a sufficient number of completed responses have been met in each governorate aside from the island of Socotra.13 The number of minimum responses per governorate are determined by the governorate’s share of the total population, and the total number of respondents surveyed each month is approximately 2,400.

The survey is a rolling panel, where the call center initially acquires a list of 2,400 phone numbers via random digit dialing in the first month. In the second month, the same 2,400 phone numbers are contacted for an identical survey. Of these 2,400, approximately 400 on average will not be able to be reached and will have to be replaced for the second survey via random digit dialing, and approximately 200 will not respond for two months in a row. However, those that are not reached will continue to be listed in the bank of possible phone numbers to be tried each month, and the same household is potentially contacted for a number of survey rounds.14 The analysis uses surveys between March 2019 and February 2020. This sample includes 13,577 households interviewed approximately two times each. Of these households, 6,114 were interviewed only once, and the rest of the households were interviewed between 2 and 12 times spanning the 12 monthly surveys. All education results are restricted to the 11,313 households that have school-aged children and were interviewed while school was in session.

13Yemen has 333 districts that fall within 21 governorates and one municipality (capital city).

14The WFP is unable to observe whether a phone number exists in the random digit dialing procedure, and thus we are unable to identify the share of non-responses related to active phone numbers.

9