TY  - JOUR
AU  - Datar,Ashlesha
AU  - Ghosh,Arkadipta
AU  - Sood,Neeraj
TI  - Mortality Risks, Health Endowments, and Parental Investments in Infancy: Evidence from Rural India
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13649
PY  - 2007
Y2  - November 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13649
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13649.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Ashlesha Datar
RAND
1776 Main Street
Santa Monica, CA 90407
E-Mail: datar@rand.org

Arkadipta Ghosh
Pardee RAND Graduate School
1776 Main Street
Santa Monica, CA 90407
E-Mail: aghosh@rand.org

Neeraj Sood
Department of Clinical Pharmacy
USC School of Pharmacy
1985 Zonal Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90033
Tel: 310/393-0411
Fax: 310/260-8156
E-Mail: nsood@usc.edu
AB  - This paper examines whether increased background mortality risks induce households to make differential health investments in their high- versus low-endowment children. We argue that increases in background mortality risks may disproportionately affect the survival of the low-endowment sibling, consequently increasing the mortality gap between the high- and low-endowment siblings. This increase in mortality gap may induce households to investment more in their high endowment children. We test this hypothesis using nationally representative data from rural India. We use birth size as a measure of initial health endowment, immunization & breastfeeding as measures of childhood investments and infant mortality rate in the child’s village as a measure of mortality risks. We find that in villages with high mortality risks, small-at-birth children in a family are 6 - 17 percent less likely to be breastfed or immunized compared to their large-at-birth siblings. In contrast, we find no significant within family differences in investments in villages with low mortality risks.
ER  -