title: The impact of debt relief on under five mortality rate in Sub-Saharan Africa.
abstract: This paper examines the impact of the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative on under five mortality rate (U5MR) in Sub-Saharan Africa. The HIPC Initiative involves debt forgiveness and the redirection of funds that were meant to service external debt towards the provision of social services and poverty reduction in eligible countries. The Initiative is akin to a natural experiment since some countries benefited while some did not, and the timing of debt forgiveness varied across countries. We exploit these variations to identify the impact of HIPC Initiative on child mortality using a dynamic panel data estimator. We find that participation in HIPC Initiative is associated with statistically significant decreases in U5MR. On the other hand, the impact of actual debt cancelled is statistically insignificant.
authors.affiliation: a Division of Finance and Economics , Marshall University , Huntington , WV , USA.|b Department of Economics , University of South Florida , Tampa , FL , USA.
authors.forename: John Bosco
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Oryema
authors.affiliation: b Department of Economics , University of South Florida , Tampa , FL , USA.
authors.forename: Kwabena
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Gyimah-Brempong
authors.affiliation: b Department of Economics , University of South Florida , Tampa , FL , USA.
authors.forename: Gabriel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Picone
mesh_terms: D017954:Africa South of the Sahara / Q000453:epidemiology; D046688:Child Mortality / Q000639:trends*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D061895:External Debt; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models
keywords: Africa; DPD; Debt relief; HIPC; under five mortality rate