The village midwife program and infant mortality in Indonesia

Indonesia introduced over 50,000 midwives into villages in the 1990s to provide primary care to women lacking easy access to health facilities. It seems plausible to argue that the significant reduction in infant mortality that occurred from about 1993–94 was a consequence of this. The paper estimates the village midwife program's impact on infant mortality, using data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey. Regressing mortality outcomes against choice of services would lead to biased estimates because of the correlation between service choice and unobserved individual characteristics. Furthermore, non-random placement of midwives could bias estimates of their impact on infant mortality. This study overcomes such endogeneity problems by aggregating mortality outcomes and program prevalence at district level and taking account of district fixed effects in estimating the program's impact. Surprisingly, the results do not support the hypothesis that the midwife program was responsible for the observed decline in infant mortality.