Publication: Rwanda : The Impact of Conflict on Growth and Poverty
Date
2004-06
ISSN
Published
2004-06
Author(s)
Abstract
The human, social and economic costs of
Rwanda's Genocide have been staggering. Although the
country has made remarkable progress over the last ten
years, especially in terms of recovering some of the ground
lost on education and health, GDP per capita remains much
lower than what it would have been without the Genocide. Per
capita GDP today would probably be between 25 and 30 percent
higher if the conflict had not taken place. About one fourth
of the population in poverty today can be said to be poor as
a result of the Genocide.This note provides a measure of the
economic cost of the Rwanda Genocide using a technique for
the identification and correction of outliers in time
series. Specifically, the detection of an outlier in the GDP
per capita time series that can be traced to the conflict
allows the estimation of the GDP losses associated with the
Genocide. Outlier identification and correction, or
intervention analysis, is a commonly used procedure when
working with time series. In the absence of precise
information on the likely effects of a shock, analysts have
recently developed and resorted to more refined procedures
for outlier identification and correction.
Citation
“Lopez, Humberto; Wodon, Quentin; Bannon, Ian. 2004. Rwanda : The Impact of Conflict on Growth and Poverty. Social Development Notes; No. 18. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/e9335b91-1624-594a-a3d5-6033ca0deb1a License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”