Socioeconomic and ethnic-racial inequalities in childhood mortality in Mexico: how much does skin color matter?

Abstract

The aim of this work is to analyze the impact of socio-economic and ethnic-racial characteristics in the likelihood of the death of a child before their fifth birthday. Using data from the Survey of Social Mobility in México ESRU-EMOVI 2017 of the Epinosa Yglesis Center for Studies, our results suggest that women with darker skin tone are 2.82 (1.39, 5.74) times more likely to have lost a child before their fifth birthday than women with white skin tone. These are the results after controlling for different birth cohorts, sociodemographic, territorial and socio-economic characteristics. In a counterfactual scenario, the probability of losing a child is explained by ethnic-racial characteristics up to 28.7%, and by socio-economic characteristics up to 58.5%. The loss of a child is a demographic event unequally distributed in the population, and determined not only by socio-economic characteristics, but also by ethnic and racial characteristics. The idea of miscegenation that proposes racial equality in the population in Mexico proves inaccurate and prevents the saving of lives.