1 Does Trade reduce Infant Mortality? Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa Pallavi

This paper investigates the impact of a trade policy, the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), on infant mortality and fleshes out the likely mechanisms. Estimating the causal effect of trade policy on health outcome is difficult since omitted variables are likely to be correlated with other country characteristics that support higher trade and enhance children’s health. While some previous research has addressed this endogeneity using instrumental variables, this paper addresses the problem by developing a micro panel dataset across countries and exploiting within-mother variation in survival of infants. I find that the policy reduces infant mortality by about 7 infant deaths per 1000; 9 % of the sample mean. I also identify channels through which the mortality reduction operates including increasing health seeking behavior, increased possession of assets and increased maternal labor supply in non-agricultural sectors. Disaggregation reveals that rural and poor women experience larger decreases in infant deaths than urban and non-poor women. Studying the heterogeneity at country level suggests that sub-Saharan African countries with large agricultural export sectors experience a larger decline in infant deaths