Serova Anna

№ 4, 2019

• How Do “Good Governance” and Globalization Reduce Infant Mortality: Causal Link

  The infant mortality rate (IMR) is one of the most important indicators of population health. Although today it has ceased to be a “mirror” of the general socio-economic situation in the country, its importance as an indicator of human development remains. At the same time, the recent years have witnessed the increasingly narrowing gap in IMR between democratic and authoritarian countries.

  Today, many researchers tend to believe that cross-country variation in the level of infant mortality can be explained by the quality of governance rather than the nature of the political regime. Having examined the theoretical arguments in favor of this conclusion, D.Rosenberg and A.Serova test this hypothesis on the extensive empirical data, developing and refining the previous studies along two directions. First, they include the factor of globalization as an additional mechanism that can potentially influence the level of infant mortality, thereby helping authoritarian countries catch up with democratic states. Second, they attempt to solve the problem of endogeneity i.e., to show the causal link between “good governance” and infant mortality. To assess the impact of “good governance” and globalization on infant mortality, they use a time-series cross-national regression analysis, and in order to prove the existence of causality they turn to an instrumental variable.

  DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2019-95-4-175-187

  Pages: 175-187