Proportional Representation, Political Responsiveness and Child Mortality

Christina Gathmann

No 12729, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: There has been a longstanding debate about the link between political representation and health. In this article, I provide novel evidence that electoral reforms that shifted from a majoritarian to a proportional system of voter representation generated substantive health benefits for the general population. Using the exemplary case of Switzerland, I first show that the spread of proportional representation between 1890 and 1950 increased political participation and gave the working class, represented by left-wing parties, greater weight in the political process. Consistent with theories of the electoral system, proportional representation increased public investments, esp. in basic education, with few effects on redistribution or total spending. Based on comprehensive archival mortality statistics since 1890, I then demonstrate that the observed shifts in representation and public finances were associated with substantial declines in child mortality by 15% and in mortality from infectious diseases, the major killer of the time, by 10-15%.

Keywords: electoral system; proportional representation; mortality; health; Switzerland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H51 I14 N33 N34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60 pages
Date: 2019-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-dem, nep-his and nep-ore
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp12729.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12729

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().