The Intergenerational Mortality Tradeoff of COVID-19 Lockdown Policies
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, this paper builds a macro-susceptible-infected-rec...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/990621622121589737/The-Intergenerational-Mortality-Tradeoff-of-COVID-19-Lockdown-Policies http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35638 |
| Summary: | 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, this paper builds 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. The
findings show 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. |
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