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Child Mortality and Environment in Developing Countries

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Abstract

This paper studies child mortality and fertility in 61 developing countries including the Central Asian Republics (CARs). To control for simultaneity, an estimated value of fertility was used in the mortality equation and a final specification included only exogenous socio-economic, health and environmental variables. We confirm the importance of female literacy in explaining both fertility and mortality, and also find a measure of consumption for the poorest share of the population to be significant, while controlling for nutrition, health expenditure, and income distribution. Incidence of tuberculosis and female agricultural population proxy for environmental impacts, but in spite of these controls, approximately 41% additional mortality was estimated due to living in the CARs. The results fill gaps in the literature: we use a wider range of socio-economic and environmental health variables than previously in an encompassing analysis of mortality and fertility, and find evidence of excessive mortality in the CARs most likely linked to environmental degradation in the region.

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Notes

  1. CARs include the Republics of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

  2. Former Soviet Union (FSU) includes the 12 CIS nations and the Baltic Republics: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

  3. Within this paper, child mortality refers to deaths of infants (age 0–1) and children age (0–5), interchangeably, though we use the more reliable under-five mortality in our quantitative analysis.

  4. PovcalNet is a statistical program designed by Chen, Datt and Ravallion at the World Bank; data can be downloaded for free from http://www.iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/jsp/index.jsp.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Erwin Tiongson from the World Bank for discussions on the PovcalNet database and to Michal Horvath at the University of St. Andrews for helpful comments; to Haixiao Huang at the University of Western Virginia for his input on the econometric component of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Finance, University of St. Andrews, St. Katherine's, The Scores, St. Andrews, Fife, UK

    Jennifer S. Franz & Felix FitzRoy

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Correspondence to Jennifer S. Franz.

Appendices

Appendix A

Data Appendix

The database for measuring consumption of the poor (Cp) draws on 454 surveys covering 97 developing countries and incorporates 93% of the population of the developing world, with over 1.1 million households interviewed, giving an average sample size of approximately 11,000; the distributions are weighted by household size.

Countries with surveys on consumption available in 2001 were used in this analysis (Chen & Ravallion, 2004). Information on total mean consumption, the poverty headcount and gap are utilized to estimate mean consumption of the poorest share of the population. The Cp estimates were obtained by the World Bank’s Data group based on a basket of price and consumption data collected by the 1993 International Comparison Project (ICP) which covered 110 countries.

Calculation of (Cp)

Using the World Bank PovcalNet database for 2001 \( {\text{Cp}} = {\text{[(PL}} - {\text{(PL*(PG/PH))]}} \) where Cp =  is consumption of those living on less than $$2 per day

  • PL  = Poverty line ($$2 per day for this analysis*12 to get monthly consumption)

  • PG = poverty gap or the mean distance below the poverty line as proportion of the poverty line

  • PH = Poverty headcount or the % of the population living in households with consumption per person below the poverty line

  • (Cp * 12) = annual consumption of the poor.

Appendix B

Countries used in analysis by regional groupings

Middle East/North Africa: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Yemen; Sub-Saharan Africa: Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Zambia; South/East Asia: Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam; Americas/ Caribbean: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Venezuela; Central/Eastern Europe/FSU: Albanian, Armenia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Ukraine; CARs: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.

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Franz, J.S., FitzRoy, F. Child Mortality and Environment in Developing Countries. Popul Environ 27, 263–284 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-006-0020-7

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