Remittances And Under Five Mortality: Evidence From Sub Saharan African Countries

Henri Njangang, Université de Dschang
Tadadjeu Sosson, Université de Dschang

Despite increasing remittances flows in recent decades, Africa remains the region with the highest under-five mortality rates compared to the rest of the world. However, much of the literature on the effects of remittances has focused on poverty reduction and economic growth. Very little attention has been given to the health sector. The aim of this study is to examine the impact of remittances on under-five mortality in 38 countries Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1998 to 2014. The empirical evidences are based on fixed effects, Generalized Method of moments and quantiles estimators. The main results show that remittances contribute significantly to a reduction in under-five mortality. These results are robust to the use of alternative measures of mortality, including infant and neonatal mortality, as well as the inclusion of additional control variables. Based on these results, several policy implications can be drawn.