Socioeconomic and ethnic-racial inequalities in childhood mortality in Mexico: how much does skin color matter?

Abstract

The aim of this work is to analyze the impact of socio-economic and ethnic-racial characteristics in the likelihood of the death of a child before their fifth birthday. Using data from the Survey of Social Mobility in México ESRU-EMOVI 2017 of the Epinosa Yglesis Center for Studies, our results suggest that women with darker skin tone are 2.82 (1.39, 5.74) times more likely to have lost a child before their fifth birthday than women with white skin tone. These are the results after controlling for different birth cohorts, sociodemographic, territorial and socio-economic characteristics. In a counterfactual scenario, the probability of losing a child is explained by ethnic-racial characteristics up to 28.7%, and by socio-economic characteristics up to 58.5%. The loss of a child is a demographic event unequally distributed in the population, and determined not only by socio-economic characteristics, but also by ethnic and racial characteristics. The idea of miscegenation that proposes racial equality in the population in Mexico proves inaccurate and prevents the saving of lives.

Keywords:
Skin color; Infant mortality; Racial inequalities; Counterfactual; Mexico