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Can Institutional Deliveries Reduce Newborn Mortality? Evidence From Rwanda, Edward Okeke, A.V. Chari
Can Institutional Deliveries Reduce Newborn Mortality? Evidence From Rwanda, Edward Okeke, A.V. Chari
Edward Okeke
Current global health policies emphasize institutional deliveries as a pathway to achieving reductions in newborn mortality in developing countries. There is however remarkably little evidence regarding a causal relationship between institutional deliveries and newborn mortality. In this paper we take advantage of a shock to institutional deliveries provided by the randomized rollout of a government performance-based financing program in Rwanda, to provide the first estimates of this causal effect. We construct an instrumental variables estimator that combines interrupted time-series and difference-in-differences approaches. We do not find any statistically significant effect of an institutional birth on either 7- or 30-day mortality …