societal norms, incorrect beliefs and a lack of awareness of women’s rights, and institutional and legal restrictions (Vilardo and Bittar, 2018).

Only a handful of studies currently examine the long-term impacts of war on school-age children. We review the most pertinent studies. Olga (2010) examines the impacts of war on school-age children and shows that girls at school age who were exposed to the 1992-1998 armed conflict had lower probability of completing their mandatory schooling than those who were not exposed to the conflict in Tajikistan, but there is no effect of the conflict on education of boys. Similarly, Ichino and Webmer (2004) show that children who were ten years old during World War II received less education and experienced a sizable earnings loss some 40 years later. Blattman and Annan (2010) find adverse impacts on children-abductees who were between 11 and 24 years old during the years they spent with the rebel forces on schooling, skilled employment and earnings in Uganda.

# **2.** **<mark>Data</mark>**

This study uses the Iraq Household Socio-Economic Surveys (IHSES) 2006-2007. IHSES 20062007 surveyed 18,144 households, including all three layers of the governorates: one layer for the urban area of the center of the governorate, one layer for the rest of the urban areas, and one layer for the rural areas. This survey served as the foundation for revising the Consumer Price Index (CPI) from an out-of-date 1990 one to a revised 2007 index. IHSES 2006-2007 is nationally representative and covers socio-economic data on migration, labor, education, health, anthropometrics, agriculture, nonfarm, expenditure and income. This survey was carried out by the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Kurdistan Regional Statistics Office, in the field for a year, between October 2006 and November 2007. It covered all 18 governorates in Iraq.

# **3. Methodology**

The empirical analysis relies on the variation in the timing of when children finished primary school and the war started. Children who finished primary school right after the onset of the Islamic Republic of Iran–Iraq war have little or no impact of the war compared with those children who had not completed primary school at the timing of the war. Children are more likely to drop out of school if they skip the critical years of primary school education. According to the standard human capital theory (Becker, 1993), enrolling a child in school as early as possible is optimal, as this is when the opportunity cost of the child's time is lowest. Psychological research also indicates that enrolling children in school at an earlier age can be beneficial, as brain development related to cognitive skills becomes increasingly less sensitive with age after the age of 5-6 (Shonkoff and Phillips, 2000). Indeed, Chen (2015) shows that delaying enrollment in school for one year results in a 10 percentage point increase in first-grade retention among boys and a 6 percentage point reduction in the likelihood of middle school enrollment for both boys and girls in rural China. Also, Wils (2004) finds that late school enrollment is associated with higher school dropout rates in Mozambique. Similarly, No et al. (2016) indicate that late school entry of students in grades 1– 4 is one of the causes of school dropouts in Cambodia. According to IHSES 2006-2007, the average percentage of completing primary education or above for cohorts of 1963-1969, who finished primary school during the Islamic Republic of Iran–Iraq war, was 88%. In contrast, 4