Working Paper: NBER ID: w28925
Authors: Lin Ma; Gil Shapira; Damien De Walque; Quytoan Do; Jed Friedman; Andrei A. Levchenko
Abstract: In lower-income countries, the economic contractions that accompany lockdowns to contain the spread of COVID-19 can increase child mortality, counteracting the mortality reductions achieved by the lockdown. To formalize and quantify this effect, we build a macro-susceptible-infected-recovered model that features heterogeneous agents and a country-group-specific relationship between economic downturns and child mortality, and calibrate it to data for 85 countries across all income levels. We find that in low-income countries, a lockdown can potentially lead to 1.76 children's lives lost due to the economic contraction per COVID-19 fatality averted. The ratio stands at 0.59 and 0.06 in lower-middle and upper-middle income countries, respectively. As a result, in some countries lockdowns can actually produce net increases in mortality. In contrast, the optimal lockdown that maximizes the present value of aggregate social welfare is shorter and milder in poorer countries than in rich ones, and never produces a net mortality increase.
Keywords: COVID-19; lockdown policies; child mortality; economic contraction; intergenerational tradeoff
JEL Codes: I15; I18
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Lockdowns (H76) | Economic contraction (E32) |
| Economic contraction (E32) | Child mortality (J13) |
| Lockdowns (H76) | Child mortality in low-income countries (O15) |
| Economic contraction (E32) | Child mortality in low-income countries (O15) |
| Lockdowns in high-income countries (F38) | Total mortality (J17) |
| Lockdowns in low-income countries (F63) | Total mortality (J17) |