@article{bc473d8255074196b9c0567ec0888a6d,
title = "Democracy and health: Evidence from within-country heterogeneity in the Congo",
abstract = "The literature documents a positive association between democracy and health, and studies supporting this claim have largely relied on cross-country panel analyses. In many developing countries, however, local traditional leaders at the micro-level play a key role in individuals' daily lives while the influence of the national government is largely negligible. In response, this study revisits the relationship between democracy and health using micro-level household data from 816 randomly selected villages in Eastern Congo. We find little or no evidence that health outcomes are better in villages that are governed by elected leaders compared to villages where leaders are not elected. Our data suggest that efforts to improve health outcomes in this setting may need to focus on issues such as gender discrimination and education.",
keywords = "Chiefs, Democracy, Democratic Republic of Congo, Health, Micro-level",
author = "{van der Windt}, Peter and Sotiris Vandoros",
note = "Funding Information: We are grateful to the Editor and two anonymous referees for their constructive comments and feedback. We would also like to thank participants at the 12th World Congress on Health Economics, 8–11 July 2017, Boston MA. All outstanding errors are our own. The data for this paper were collected by Van der Windt in collaboration with Macartan Humphreys and Raul Sanchez de la Sierra, the IRC, CARE International, and the universities of Bukavu and Lubumbashi; our deepest thanks to them. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (grant number: OW2.232 ). No conflicts of interest arise from this paper. Ethics Approval: Data for this study were collected by one of the two authors (Peter van der Windt) as part of a larger study under the leadership of Macartan Humphreys (PI). IRB approval for data collection has been obtained from Columbia University: IRB-AAAF4550. De-identified data and instruments have been posted online in August 2015: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/BSASJR . The study builds on data from this source. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2017 Elsevier Ltd",
year = "2017",
month = dec,
doi = "10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.10.008",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "194",
pages = "10--16",
journal = "Ethics in Science and Medicine",
issn = "0277-9536",
publisher = "Elsevier Limited",
}