Shock to the System: Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV and Child Mortality ∗ Nicholas Wilson First Draft: May 2012 Current Version: July 2013 Abstract This paper examines the effect of introducing a new HIV/AIDS service, prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT), on overall quality of prenatal and postnatal care. My results suggest that local PMTCT introduction in Zambia may have actually in- creased all cause child mortality in the short term. There is some evidence that vaccinations may have declined in the short term in association with local PMTCT introduction, suggesting that the new service may have partly crowded out existing pediatric health services. JEL classification: H40; I10; J13 Keywords: child mortality; HIV/AIDS; HIV prevention; PMTCT; Zambia ∗Nicholas Wilson: Department of Economics, Reed College,
[email protected]. I would like to thank Eran Bendavid, Marianne Bitler, Alfredo Burlando, Raluca Buzdugan, Christopher Carpenter, Joseph Cummins, Carlos Dobkin, William Dow, Pascaline Dupas, Frederico Finan, G¨unther Fink, Emmanuela Gakidou, Paul Gertler, Erick Gong, Laura Guay, Gianmarco Le´on,Ethan Ligon, Jeremy Magruder, Zo¨eMcClaren, Sandra McCoy, Edward Miguel, Christopher Murray, Nancy Padian, Bei Qin, Jonathon Robinson, David Sahn, Lucie Schmidt, T. Paul Schultz, Man- isha Shah, Lara Shore-Sheppard, Jeffrey Stringer, Anand Swamy, Harsha Thirumurthy, Waly Wane, Tara Watson, David Weil, and seminar participants at the XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington, DC, the NBER Africa Project