The authors found that, on average, a 1% reduction in the per capita GDP implies a 0.24 to 0.40 increase in infant mortality per 1,000 live births. In a more recent study, O’Hare et al.17 found effects of 0.33 for infant mortality and 0.28 for under-five mortality. These results are higher than those observed in the present study, which found an association of approximately 0.12 for infant mortality and 0.10 for under-five mortality rate for the total sample, and 0.15 and 0.14, respectively, for the subsample of low- and middle-income countries. This difference is probably due to the countries included in the sample, as Baird et al.14 and O’Hare et al.17 include only middle- and low-income countries in their analysis, while the present study included countries from the three income strata, with only 14% of the sample consisting of low-income countries. According to Maruthappu et al.6, the effect of economic crises on the health of children under five in the poorest countries is three-fold higher than the effect on children in high-income countries.
