Infant mortality in rural Bangladesh: state dependence vs unobserved heterogeneity

Unnati Rani Saha, ICDDR,B
Arthur van Soest, Tilburg University

Using data from the Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) in Matlab, Bangladesh, and exploiting dynamic panel data models, we analyze siblings’ death at infancy, controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and a causal effect of death of one child on survival chances of the next child. Our model predicts that in the comparison area, the likelihood of infant death is about 30% larger if the previous sibling died at infancy than if it did not, and estimates suggest that, in the absence of this “scarring” effect, the infant mortality rate among the second and higher order births would fall by 6.2%. There is no evidence of such scarring effect in the treatment area, perhaps because learning effects play a larger role with the available extensive health interventions. We find that distance to the nearest health clinic can explain a substantial part of the gap in infant mortality between the two areas.