Does the Effect of Pollution on Infant Mortality Differ Between Developing and Developed Countries? Evidence from Mexico City

Much of what we know about the marginal effect of pollution on infant mortality is derived from developed country data. However, given the lower levels of air pollution in developed countries, these estimates may not be externally valid to the developing country context if there is a non-linear dose relationship between pollution and mortality or if the costs of avoidance behaviour differ considerably between the two contexts. In this article, we estimate the relationship between pollution and infant mortality using data from Mexico. Our estimates for PM10 tend to be similar (or even smaller) than the US estimates, while our findings on CO tend to be larger than those derived from the US context.