The impact of the global financial crisis on infant mortality is a topic of great policy importance. However, estimates of the likely impacts of the crisis, cited by international institutions and in the popular press, differ wildly.
This blogpost summarizes the main conclusions from some of my own recent research on this topic, jointly with various colleagues.
These conclusions include:
1. The effect of negative growth on child health, including infant mortality, varies a great deal across countries. In developed countries, such as the US, infant mortality decreases when there are negative economic shocks. In low-income countries, including in India and countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, infant mortality increases in those periods (see Ferreira and Schady 2009 for a discussion). The picture for middle income countries is mixed, but on balance, it is closer to that found in the US. Important exceptions are cases in which the economic contraction was very severe--maybe 15 percent or larger. That was the case in two crises in Peru, and in Indonesia in 1998 (see Paxson and Schady 2005 and Schady and Smitz 2009).
