AI Article Synopsis
- The paper explores the unexpected finding that, in India, Muslim children are more likely to survive to their first birthday compared to Hindu children, despite Muslims generally having lower wealth and access to resources.
- It reveals that this higher survival rate is not due to individual Muslim households, but rather to positive effects on their Muslim neighbors.
- The authors identify poor sanitation as a significant factor, suggesting that neighborhood religious composition can impact infant mortality rates through external influences.
Article Abstract
In this paper, we shed new light on a long-standing puzzle: in India, Muslim children are substantially more likely than Hindu children to survive to their first birthday, even though Indian Muslims have lower wealth, consumption, educational attainment, and access to state services. Contrary to the prior literature, we show that the observed mortality advantage accrues not to Muslim households themselves but rather to their neighbors, who are also likely to be Muslim. Investigating mechanisms, we provide a collage of evidence suggesting externalities due to poor sanitation are a channel linking the religious composition of neighborhoods to infant mortality.
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Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10782420 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/app.20150431 | DOI Listing |
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