Does Debt Relief Improve Child Health? : Evidence from Cross-Country Micro Data

Welander, Anna

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: debt relief;    Heavily-Indebted Poor Countries;    HIPC Initiative;    child health;    health surveys;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7872
RP-ID  :  WPS7872

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper analyzes the effects of amultilateral debt relief program on child health. TheInternational Monetary Fund and the World Bank launched theHeavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative in the late 1990sto reduce the debt burdens of poor countries, and explicitlylinked the initiative to the aim of poverty reduction andsocial targets. As a result, debt-servicing costs have gonedown by an average 1.8 percentage points of gross domesticproduct in Heavily Indebted Poor Countries. However, thesocial effects of debt relief are not well known. The paperemploys micro data on infant mortality from 56country-specific Demographic and Health Surveys toinvestigate the effects of the Heavily Indebted PoorCountries Initiative on child health. The retrospectivefertility structure of the data allows for analysis usingthe within-mother variation in the probability of survivalof babies before and after different stages of theinitiative. The results suggest that after a debt-riddencountry enters the program, which is conditional on reformand pro-development policies, and receives interim debtrelief, the probability of infant mortality goes down byabout 0.5 percentage point. This translates into about 3,000fewer infant deaths in an average Heavily Indebted PoorCountry. The findings are particularly strong for infantsborn to poor mothers and mothers living in rural areas, andare driven by access to vaccines early in life and duringpregnancy. There are no child health effects from graduatingfrom the program and receiving full debt relief.