The Humanitarian Impact of Economic Sanctions

Economic sanctions have the reputation of harming the population in the sanctioned countries. In this paper, I investigate under what circumstances such harm occurs and what is its magnitude. I estimate the impact of in utero exposure to sanctions episodes on infant weight, child height, and child mortality. Using a large child level data set from 69 countries, I …nd that being exposed to sanctions leads to lower infant weight and higher probability of death before age three. I …nd negative e¤ects only for children exposed to the …rst two years of sanctions. JEL codes: I10, J13, and O12. American Enterprise Institute, 1150 17th St NW, Washington, DC 20036 (e-mail: [email protected]). I am extremely grateful to Chris Blattman, David Cutler, Stefano DellaVigna, Kim Elliott, Martin Feldstein, Kevin Hassett, Gary Hufbauer, Aparna Mathur, Jesse Shapiro, and Alan Viard, to participants and discussants at various economics seminars and conferences for very valuable comments. I am also very thankful to Scott Ganz for great research assistance and to Dharana Rijal and Soren Larson for their work with Nepali birthdays. Data on economic sanctions used with permission of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Copyright 2007. All rights reserved. Economic sanctions are often blamed for human su¤ering. A New York Times article called the U.S. sanctions on Burma a "feel-good substitute" for policy and predicted that they "will cause babies to die, young women to succumb to AIDS and families to go hungry" (Kristof 2003). Even o¢ cials involved in imposing economic sanctions admit that sanctions could have an adverse e¤ect on the population. In an editorial in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State, mentioned that “When the United Nations or the United States imposes sanctions against a regime, [. . . ] it does not intend to create unnecessary hardships for innocent people, especially children and infants. Good intentions, however, do not automatically translate into good results”(Albright 2000). Despite the large number of sanctions imposed in the world today and the attention they draw to the human su¤ering in the sanctioned countries, there is little empirical evidence that isolates the e¤ects of sanctions and that measures the magnitude of these negative e¤ects. In this study, I estimate the e¤ects of exposure to economic sanctions on child health and mortality for children under three years old. This paper builds on the literature on economic sanctions and on the literature on child health and mortality. Several studies such as Gar…eld (1999), Gar…eld (2001), Gar…eld et al (1995), Heine-Ellison (2001), Hoskins and Nutt (1997), Lopez and Cortright (1997), Shehabaldin and Laughlin Jr (1999) describe the e¤ects of sanctions on the civilian population using the case study approach. Ali et al (2003), Barry (2000), Gar…eld and Santana (1997), Gibbons and Gar…eld (1999), and Popal (2000) are papers that go a step further and use various sources of data in a descriptive manner. This paper investigates whether the e¤ects described in these studies apply to a broader set of sanctioned countries and whether they are supported by empirical analysis. Several papers analyze micro level data, but for only one country at a time. Ali and Shah (2000) analyze a micro level survey data from Iraq to estimate the e¤ects of sanctions on under …ve years old mortality, Bundervoet and Verwimp (2005) use household surveys from Burundi to estimate the e¤ects of sanctions and civil wars on child height, Daponte and Gar…eld (2000) examine the e¤ects of sanctions on Iraqi children, and Reid et al (2007) look at child level data from Haiti and estimate the