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Child Mortality: Is Aid Fungibility in Pro-Poor Expenditure Sectors Decisive?

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Abstract

If development assistance targeted at specific sectors is not used as intended, aid is said to be fungible. Using country-specific estimates of the degree of aid fungibility in “pro-poor” government expenditure sectors, I assess the effect on child mortality. Results indicate that fungibility within these sectors does not help to explain differences in mortality. However, when separating the sample into democracies and non-democracies, results suggest that pro-poor expenditures influence mortality in non-democracies only and that aid treated as fungible tends to be used efficiently in democracies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Stockholm University, S-106 91, Stockholm, Sweden

    Jan Pettersson

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  1. Jan Pettersson
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Correspondence to Jan Pettersson.

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JEL no.

F35, O11, O23

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Pettersson, J. Child Mortality: Is Aid Fungibility in Pro-Poor Expenditure Sectors Decisive?. Rev World Econ 143, 673–693 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10290-007-0127-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10290-007-0127-7

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