Assessing Impact of Health Oriented Aid on Infant Mortality Rates

Assessing Impact of Health Oriented Aid on Infant Mortality Rates

Abstract:
This paper examines the relationship between health aid and infant mortality, using data from in total 135 countries (for the purposes of this study, developing countries), between 1975 and 2010. Utilizing both conventional Instrumental Variable and System GMM approaches, a tentative conclusion can be drawn that aid comes to have a statistically significant and positive effect on infant mortality rate, as doubling of aid leads to an approximately 1.3% reduction in infant mortality rates. Thus for an average aid recipient country, doubling per capita aid leads to a reduction of about 790 deaths per million live births in a particular year. This effect, in comparison to the set goals of the Millennium Development Goals, is small and may not be enough to ensure that the MDG targets are met by 2015.

Table Of Contents: Page Number I) Introduction 3 II) Literature Review 5 III) Data Description 10 IV) Short Look at Data 14 V) Methodology 18 VI) Results 23 VII) Robustness Checks 30 VIII) Conclusion 31 IX) References 32 X) Appendix I 36 XI) Appendix II 39

Introduction:
The last two decades have seen a prolific output of literature which has sought to delve into the effectiveness of official development assistance (ODA) on health outcomes. This can be seen in stark contrast to the turn of the century, when only a few acclaimed works had looked into this issue. However, despite this vast amount of literature, there still exists a substantial amount of disagreement as to the issue of effectiveness of aid on health outcomes. Prior to the turn of the century, most studies of aid effectiveness have tended to focus on economic development, and it was only recently that there has been a shift in focus to

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