change in school attendance following the ceasefire was small in magnitude and precludes a large decline. Using the upper bound of the 95 percent confidence interval, one can reject the hypothesis that the decline in school attendance was larger than 4.3 percentage points at standard significance levels.

The lack of a significant change in school attendance following the ceasefire also survives a number of different specifications. Column (5) demonstrates the estimates are qualitatively identical when using a logit specification; and column (6) demonstrates that when breaking up the pre- and post-periods by month, school attendance was not trending prior to the ceasefire, did not change during the ceasefire, and also did not change after the ceasefire fell apart.34 And third, we demonstrate a qualitatively identical pattern with the capture of Al Jawf from the IRG by DFA forces in column (7)-(9).35 Despite the rapid increase in violence in the region described in figure 2, there is little evidence suggesting that there was a large impact on school attendance. Column (7) demonstrates that there was little difference in school attendance following the capture. Although the estimate in column (7) is small in magnitude, it is also imprecisely estimated and cannot rule out larger impacts on school attendance.

The lack of a significant change in school attendance in Al Jawf also survives different specifications. Column (8) demonstrates the estimates are qualitatively identical when using a logit specification with an imprecisely estimated but positive impact; and column (9) demonstrates that when breaking up the pre- and post-periods by month, school attendance was not trending prior to the capture and there was little change either during the capture or in the month-and-a-half following the transition back to the IRG. Importantly, estimates in column (9) also demonstrate that there was little change in school attendance following a limited ceasefire signed in late September that led to significantly less violence in the governorate between October and January, which further corroborate estimates in columns (4)-(6).

Although all results in table 3 are consistent with the summary statistics of school attendance presented in figure 4 and consistent with the lack of a relationship between the severity of violence and school attendance presented in table 2, the lack of a change in school attendance following any of these sharp conflict events is surprising. Both the secessionist capture and the capture of Al Jawf led to significant increases in violence and a change in governance, each of which could significantly impact attendance. Furthermore, news and humanitarian sources emphasized the negative impact each event had on the population (e.g., Al Jazeera 2020; OCHA 2020; etc.). Alternatively, the partial ceasefire led to decline in violence was large enough that the total amount of violence in the country followed a nearly identical pattern, and some of the most violent regions in the country were much calmer for the first half of the 2019-2020 school year (figure 2). However, despite the significant changes in violence when the partial ceasefire went into effect and when it broke down, there were no changes in school attendance.

Additionally, these results demonstrate that the impact of sudden changes in violence is

> 34In results not shown, the lack of a change is identical in all four governorates affected by the ceasefire. 35The sample for estimating the impact of the capture of Al Jawf includes all surveys completed during the school year between September 2019 and February 2020.

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