Suchergebnisse

This paper documents the effects of the recent civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo on mortality both in utero and during the first year of life. It instruments for conflict intensity using a mineral price index, which exploits the exogenous variation in the potential value of mineral resources generated by changes in world mineral prices to predict the geographic distribution of the conflict. Using estimates of civil war exposure on mortality across male and female newborn to assess their relative health, it provides evidence of culling effect (in utero selection) as a consequence of in utero shocks.

This paper documents the effects of the recent civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo on mortality both in utero and during the first year of life. It instruments for conflict intensity using a mineral price index, which exploits the exogenous variation in the potential value of mineral resources generated by changes in world mineral prices to predict the geographic distribution of the conflict. Using estimates of civil war exposure on mortality across male and female newborn to assess their relative health, it provides evidence of culling effect (in utero selection) as a consequence of in utero shocks.

Developments in infant mortality in Germany have previously only been documented in a fragmentary fashion for the 19th century as a whole, and only on a small scale for the period prior to 1871. For the first time, this paper lays a solid statistical foundation by reprocessing the figures assembled by the German states of that time. The reconstructed national statistical series (from 1826 onwards) reveals a comparatively high infant mortality, with minor deviations until the turn of the 20th century. The impact of urbanisation and industrialisation is not denied, but an evaluation of the different regional patterns and trends leads to a new weighting. The living and working conditions in the countryside were thus highly determining. The relationship between fertility and infant mortality is assessed differently for the era of the sustained reduction in fertility than for the preceding period. All in all, the prevalent customs and attitudes are regarded as being vital to infants' survival chances. We therefore need to look at attitudes among the educated public and the authorities. Efforts on the part of these groups to bring about change were particularly observed in the South West, where an awareness of the dramatic problem arose comparatively early. Further historic research at the regional level will be needed in order to achieve a final evaluation of these processes.

Infant mortality is still a major problem in our country as its level has
remained relatively high by European standards. This points to the need for
better preventive measures particularly as regards infant mortality and
other adverse consequences of pregnancy, as key indicators of health and
health care for mother and child. Namely, the analysis of movement in infant
mortality in low mortality countries shows that it can be decreased
relatively easily if certain social and health care measures are undertaken.
For that reason, it is necessary to engage in permanent organized research
to explain and measure both the relative impact of individual factors or
groups of factors in our country which are significant in terms of infant
mortality and their mutual relationships. We should also try to gain from
the experiences of other countries which had already made progress in this
respect. One of the elements of prevention is certainly the analysis of
causes of infant morbidity and mortality primarily during the pre-natal
period with the aim of specifying the most frequent causes of death to
enable their elimination and to induce a subsequent decline in infant
mortality. Besides showing the efficiency of health service activities, data
on causes of infant death also point to the specific measures that should be
undertaken and may be used as a base for planning and programming the
development of health services, i.e. implementation of health policy as part
of the population policy. With the decline in infant mortality in our
country there has also been registered a change in the composition of
diseases as the most frequent cause of death. During the initial observation
period when the general level of infant mortality was exceptionally high,
the share of infectious diseases and those of the respiratory system was
very large. These deaths were mainly induced by exogenous factors, that is
the diseases which the society in general and health services in particular
could most easily have checked both by measures to improve the general
living conditions and by preventive and curative health care measures. The
period from 1989 to 1996 is characterized by endogenous causes of infant
mortality primarily during the neonatal period and have to do with the
constitutional features of the live-born children, congenital anomalies,
premature birth, respiratory distress, etc. Thus, from the socio-medical
point of view, the primary causes of infant mortality in this period are
genetically induced or can be attributed to the mother in labour birth which
modern men and modern medicine cannot influence to a larger extent. The
analysis of infant death frequency by group of causes of death points that
there still exist possibilities of eliminating the exogenous causes of death
(as the same causes prevail in the socio-economically least developed
regions of the country). Besides, some improvement can also be expected in
the area of endogenous mortality (improvement in pre-natal diagnostics and
other measures of health care for pregnant women and those who have just
given birth, better conditions for child delivery and application of modern
techniques to care for the prematurely born children. The semanatal
mortality is probably the major socio-medical problem in our country both
because it accounts for the highest percentage in neo-natal mortality and
because it displays an almost negligible downward tendency. This justifies
another request - for a more extensive and comprehensive analysis of this
problem as well as for participation of other scientific disciplines besides
medicine. Among the leading causes of semanatal mortality in the most recent
observation period are premature birth, congenital anomalies, respiratory
distress syndrome and intrauterine hypoxia and asphyxia at birth.

During the sixties overall infant mortality rate of Bangladesh was largely static. It increased considerably in the early seventies following the liberation war of 1971 and the country-wide famine of 1974. Mortality differentials by residence, however, reveal that an unchanged mortality situation during the sixties prevailed only in rural areas of Bangladesh while urban mortality was able to achieve noteworthy improvements at that time. The author concludes that despite the fact that the country has been able to accomplish some decline in overall mortality in recent decades, no corresponding decline has taken place in the area of infant mortality. (DÜI-Sen)

This paper investigates the impact of macroeconomic shocks on infant mortality in India and investigates likely mechanisms. A recent OECD-dominated literature shows that mortality at most ages is pro-cyclical but similar analyses for poorer countries are scarce, and both income risk and mortality risk are greater in poor countries. This paper uses individual data on infant mortality for about 150000 children born in 1970-1997, merged by birth-cohort with a state panel containing information on aggregate income. Identification rests upon comparing the effects of annual deviations in income from trend on the mortality risks of children born at different times to the same mother, conditional upon a number of state-time varying covariates including rainshocks. I cannot reject the null that income shocks have no effect on mortality in urban households, but I find that rural infant mortality is counter-cyclical, the elasticity being about -0.46. This is despite the possibility that relatively high risk women avert birth or suffer fetal loss in recessions. It seems related to the fact that women's participation in the (informal) labour market increases in recessions, presumably, to compensate a decline in their husband's wages. Consistent with this but, in contrast to results for richer countries, antenatal and postnatal health-care decline in recessions. These effects are reinforced by pro-cyclicality in state health and development expenditure. Another interesting finding that is informative about the underlying mechanisms is that the effect of aggregate income on rural mortality is driven by non-agricultural income. -- Infant mortality ; income volatility ; business cycles ; India ; health care ; maternal labour supply ; public expenditure