War and infant mortality rates

Abstract

War represents one of the gravest threats to the right to health. A range of international human rights covenants have enumerated the rights of both adults and children to lead full healthy lives, free from the dangers of war. Yet we know remarkably little about how war systematically affects children’s rights to health. We have limited knowledge about if different types of conflict—major interstate and major civil wars—have similar or different consequences for children’s health. This article examines the immediate and cumulative links of major interstate and major civil wars with infant mortality rates, a key measure of children’s health. The article employs generalized least squares regression with two-way fixed effects over the 1950–2007 period. The core results indicate that major civil and major interstate wars substantively violate children’s and infants’ rights to health. States that spent the most amount of time involved in major interstate wars were associated with the worst overall increases in infant mortality rates.