By Lara Jane Climaco
Unemployment does not breed but rather curbs insurgency, according to United States-based researchers who studied insurgency incidents in Iraq and
the Philippines and how these relate to the rise and fall of unemployment rates in affected localities.
“Our findings of the relationship between unemployment and insurgency in Iraq and the Philippines call into question the opportunity cost theory that dominates thinking in policy circles. These results suggest that any opportunity cost effects — at least in these two cases — are overshadowed by other forces,†the authors of a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper said.
NBER is a private economic research group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The working paper, titled “Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment in Iraq and the Philippines,†was done by Eli Berman of University of California, San Diego; Joseph Felter of Stanford University; and Jacob N. Shapiro of Princeton University.
The authors said they analyzed the relationship between unemployment and insurgency to test the opportunity cost theory, which is central to development spending by governments. The opportunity cost theory rests on the notion that creating jobs would curb insurgency because working men wouldn’t have the time to participate in violent activities.
Their findings are based on separate statistical analysis of official data from Iraq and the Philippines. For the Philippines, they based their analysis on 21,000 individual internal security incidents reported by the Armed Forces of the Philippines from 2001-2008 and unemployment rates in provinces with more than five percent Muslim population.
In both the Philippines and Iraq, they said there is no significant relationship between unemployment and insurgency incidents that led to civilian casualties. On the other hand, the data actually show that “unemployment predicts less violence.â€
They said the negative correlation between unemployment and insurgency was tested and proven against various scenarios in the case of Iraq. The statistical analysis presents 95 percent confidence level that unemployment has nothing to do with insurgency in Iraq, according to the working paper. “The results are somewhat weaker for the Philippines but the correlation is consistently negative, especially in the more Muslim provinces where the insurgency is concentrated,†the authors said.
They said the results suggest policymakers need to rethink their development strategy, because unlike the case with crime rates in the U.S., the opportunity cost theory does not apply in both Iraq and the Philippines.
“The negative correlation of unemployment with violence indicates that aid and development efforts that seek to enhance political stability through short-term job creation programs may well be misguided,†they said. “Development funds might be directed instead at improving the quality of local government services, thereby inducing noncombatants to share intelligence about insurgents with their government and its allies.â€
They said their findings bear out two hypotheses concerning counterinsurgency: first, that financial hardship makes it more conducive for government forces to gather intelligence on insurgents; and, secondly, that security measures like establishing checkpoints actually worsen unemployment in conflict areas because these impede the flow of goods and services. (PNA)
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