Malaria Control and Infant Mortality in Africa

Denis Cogneau (1, 2, 3) , Pauline Rossi (1, 4)

1 PSE - Paris School of Economics
2 PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques
3 Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)
4 CREST - Centre de Recherche en Économie et Statistique

Have malaria control efforts contributed to the reduction in infant mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa over the past 15 years? Using large household surveys collected in 19 countries between 2000 and 2015, we estimate the correlation between the distribution of bednets and the progress in child survival. We find that the large increase in bednets ownership observed between 2000 and 2015 is associated with a decrease in infant mortality by 1.3pp, which amounts to one third of the total decrease in infant mortality over the period. We further discuss to which extent this correlation might be interpreted as a causal impact.

Keywords: Child mortality; Malaria; Africa; Foreign aid

Domains: Economics and Finance

Denis Cogneau, Pauline Rossi. Malaria Control and Infant Mortality in Africa. 2017. ⟨hal-01543033v1⟩