Which freedoms benefit the poor? A two‐horse race between economic and political freedoms on health‐adjusted life expectancy and child mortality, 1990–2020

Abstract

We examine theoretically and empirically whether democratic rights might be superior to economic rights in a two‐horse race, utilizing indicators of poverty reduction, such as health‐adjusted life expectancy (HALE) and child mortality as outcomes. The results show robustly that economic freedoms associate positively with HALE and negatively with child mortality, while the effect of democracy is more mixed. Studies reporting a negative effect of political freedoms on child mortality without accounting for economic freedoms, thus, are potentially mis‐specified. These results are robust to a barrage of tests, alternative data, estimating method and formal tests of omitted variables bias.