Suppose, however, that the IMF growth projections were too conservative, so that the “true” contractions in GDP were larger. In the middle and bottom row we assume that every country in Africa were to have a growth rate that was 6 percent (middle row) or 10 percent (bottom row) below trend. Under these much more dire scenarios, excess deaths would be approximately 61,000 to 166,000 for the 6 percent reduction, and 101,000 to 322,000 for the 10 percent reduction—a very large number by almost any measure, but still substantially below many of the numbers discussed in the popular press. We note, however, that Table 5 suggests that essentially _all_ of these excess deaths would take place to girls, rather than boys. In Africa, there appears to be a very important gender dimension to the likely impact of negative shocks to aggregate GDP.

# **4.** **_Discussion and conclusion_**

Aggregate economic shocks can have serious, deleterious consequences for the wellbeing of children. In practice, these consequences depend on the nature and depth of the shock; on the extent to which households have access to credit or other mechanisms that allow them to smooth out the effects of an income shortfall; on public and other investments in education and health; and on the outcome being considered. There may also be important differences in the impact of a systemic shock by place of residence, socioeconomic status, and gender. In practice, aggregate economic shocks, whether from macroeconomic crises, collapses in the price of key exports, or weather shocks, appear to have had negative implications for child health and education in Africa (Ferreira and Schady 2009).

mortality rate, but also on the number of children _born_ . However, in regressions of the crude birth rate on country-specific intercepts, country-specific time trends and a variable for logGDPct, the coefficient on GDP is small and not significant at conventional levels. Second, we assume that the coefficients estimated above can be “applied” to the full list of African countries—including those that have never fielded a DHS, and were therefore not part of our sample. This assumption seems reasonable given the large number of countries that have carried out DHS in Africa—see Table 1. Third, we assume that a given change in per capita GDP will on average have the same effect on infant mortality in 2009 as it has in the past. There is obviously no way to test this assumption. Conceivably, the fact that the crisis is global (unlike the trend deviations in per capita GDP that form the basis for the calculations in the tables in the paper) could mean that the impacts of contractions in GDP will be larger—for example, if developed countries are less able or willing to provide aid—or smaller—if widespread awareness of the potential consequences of such a crisis on mortality prompts African countries or donors to take measures that counteract its effects.

10 An alternative approach to estimating the growth impacts of the financial crisis compares the World Bank’s latest growth projections for 2009 (as of mid-April, 2009) with earlier projections (from 2007) for the same calendar year. This approach, as adopted in Chen and Ravallion (2009), yields a smaller growth shortfall for Sub-Saharan Africa than the IMF projections used here – a cross-country average contraction of 1.7% of GDP in comparison with a 2.5% contraction – and consequently somewhat fewer excess deaths, ranging from 16,000 to 23,000 depending on the specification. Because the IMF growth projections are more current (at the time of writing) we report the excess deaths based on these figures.

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