The Intergenerational Mortality Tradeoff of COVID-19 Lockdown Policies

Lin Ma, Gil Shapira (), Damien de Walque, Quy-Toan Do, Jed Friedman () and Andrei Levchenko

No 28925, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

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.

JEL-codes: I15 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published as Lin Ma & Gil Shapira & Damien de Walque & Quy‐Toan Do & Jed Friedman & Andrei A. Levchenko, 2022. "The Intergenerational Mortality Trade‐Off Of Covid‐19 Lockdown Policies," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 63(3), pages 1427-1468, August.

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Related works:
Journal Article: THE INTERGENERATIONAL MORTALITY TRADE‐OFF OF COVID‐19 LOCKDOWN POLICIES (2022)
Working Paper: The Intergenerational Mortality Tradeoff of COVID-19 Lockdown Policies (2022)
Working Paper: The Intergenerational Mortality Tradeoff of COVID-19 Lockdown Policies (2021)
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