Water for Life: The Impact of the Privatization of Water Services on Child Mortality
利用阿根廷1990年代水服务私有化改革，发现私有化使儿童死亡率下降8%，在贫困地区降幅达26%，且主要减少与水质相关的传染病死亡。
While most countries are committed to increasing access to safe water and thereby reducing child mortality, there is little consensus on how to actually improve water services. One important proposal under discussion is whether to privatize water provision. In the 1990s Argentina embarked on one of the largest privatization campaigns in the world including the privatization of local water companies covering approximately 30 percent of the country’s municipalities. Using the varia tion in ownership of water provision across time and space generated by the privatization process, we find that child mortality fell 8 percent in the areas that privatized their water services; and that the effect was largest (26 percent) in the poorest areas. We check the robustness of these estimates using cause specific mortality. While privatization is associated with significant reductions in deaths from infectious and parasitic diseases, it is uncorrelated with deaths from causes unrelated to water conditions.