Do educated politicians facilitate better public health? Evidence from India

Abstract

Political representatives and their directives are discredited when there is an instance of rising mortality. However, there is limited empirical evidence linking public health outcomes to the quality of politicians. We investigate whether electing political leaders with higher levels of formal education affects child survival. Using an instrumental variable strategy exploiting quasi-experimental outcomes of close elections, we find that college-graduate politicians lead to better child health outcomes, i.e., a reduction in neonatal, infant, and under-five mortality in the regions they are elected from. We explore the potential channels of graduate leaders' impact, drawing from early life and health infrastructure investments. We also find heterogeneous impacts of graduate leaders on child mortality across states with varying levels of institutional quality and based on the leaders' political affiliation.

Keywords: Child mortality; Close elections; Graduates; Health; India; Politicians.