Abstract This article estimates the effect of armed conflict exposure on school drop-out and labor decisions of Colombian children between the ages of 6 and 17. The empirical strategy is based on two-stage duration analysis and biprobit estimations that take into account the endogeneity of conflict. We find that conflict affects children older than 11, inducing them to drop out of school and enter the labor market too early. We find that short-term exposure to violence is the most relevant for these decisions and probable channels of transmission include higher mortality risks, negative economic shocks, and lesser school quality. Keywords: Armed conflictChild laborColombiaDuration analysisSchool drop-outJEL Codes: D74I21I29 Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Paloma Lopez de Mesa for her dedicated and outstanding research assistance. They also greatly appreciate the comments received by two anonymous referees, as well as those received at the Seminario CEDE, NEUDC 2009, the North American Summer Meetings of the Econometric Society 2009, and the Economic Analysis of the Colombian Conflict: Symposium for a special issue of Defense and Peace Economics. Finally, we wish to thank the Department of Economics at the Universidad de los Andes for their financial support.