The Infant Mortality Rate in OECD Countries – Determinants and Implications

Abstract

In the context of Romania's willingness to access the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development and given the rising importance of the health status improvement, the present study evaluates the determinants of the infant mortality rate indicator, as a health proxy. Supporting the better health desideratum, this study reviews the literature dealing with the estimation of infant mortality rate through econometric modelling, further examining the relationship between this dependent variable and four classes of exogenous variables: health expenditures; healthcare resources; healthcare activities and risk factors. After examining both the dependent and the independent variables, the step-wise estimation was carried out, using the Ordinary Least Squares technique, and a Fixed Effects Model as opposed to a Random Effects Model for panel data. The best model was chosen based on goodness-of-fit measures after testing for the assumptions of the multiple regression analysis. The p-value of the Student test was verified for each of the dependent variables in order to check for their significance, and the estimated coefficients proved to be significant. The results strengthen the importance of healthcare expenditures and resources on the improvement of the healthcare output. Finding optimal levels of these factors would represent a major point in the literature. Moreover, although the infant mortality rate has maintained a downward trend, it does not necessarily mean that citizens would live better or healthier.