Healing or Harming? Unveiling the Dual Impact of IMF Reforms on Child Health Outcomes in Developing Nations

Michael Chletsos, Nikolaos Mylonidis and Andreas Sintos

Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, 2026, vol. 34, issue 1, 87-100

Abstract: We provide new insights regarding the impact of IMF programme participation and imposed policy reforms on child mortality rates using a sample of developing countries from 2000 to 2013. To account for the selection bias related to both IMF participation and conditionality, we employ a recently developed compound instrumental variables methodology. Using annual data, we show that IMF programme participation and state‐owned enterprise (SOE) privatisation conditions improve recipient countries' child mortality rates, whereas all other conditions exert an adverse effect on child mortality rates. These novel findings highlight the heterogeneous effect of IMF conditionalities and document that mandated policy reforms aimed at alleviating mismanagement and inefficiencies in SOEs can actually lead to lower child mortality rates. More generally, our results suggest that the IMF's focus on specific structural reforms, rather than on widening the scope of conditionality, is likely to yield better public health outcomes.

Date: 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.70003

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:ectrin:v:34:y:2026:i:1:p:87-100

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