College of Business Law and Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom.
Essex Business School and Essex Finance Centre, University of Essex, United Kingdom.
Soc Sci Med. 2017 Apr;178:144-156. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.01.063. Epub 2017 Feb 1.
Given many developing economies depend on primary commodities, the fluctuations of commodity prices may imply significant effects for the wellbeing of children. To investigate, this paper examines the relationship between child mortality and commodity price movements as reflected by country-specific commodity terms-of-trade. Employing a panel of 69 low and lower-middle income countries over the period 1970-2010, we show that commodity terms-of-trade volatility increases child mortality in highly commodity-dependent importers suggesting a type of 'scarce' resource curse. Strikingly however, good institutions appear able to mitigate the negative impact of volatility. The paper concludes by highlighting this tripartite relationship between child mortality, volatility and good institutions and posits that an effective approach to improving child wellbeing in low to lower-middle income countries will combine hedging, import diversification and improvement of institutional quality.
鉴于许多发展中经济体依赖初级商品，商品价格的波动可能对儿童的福祉产生重大影响。本文通过特定国家的商品贸易条件来研究儿童死亡率与商品价格波动之间的关系。本研究采用了 1970 年至 2010 年期间 69 个低收入和中下等收入国家的面板数据，结果表明，商品贸易条件波动会增加高度依赖商品的进口国的儿童死亡率，表明存在某种“稀缺”资源诅咒。然而，令人惊讶的是，良好的制度似乎能够减轻波动的负面影响。本文最后强调了儿童死亡率、波动和良好制度之间的这种三方关系，并提出，改善低收入和中下等收入国家儿童福祉的有效方法将结合套保、进口多元化和制度质量的提高。
