The Strategic Role of Infant Mortality in the Process of Economic Growth: An Application for High Income OECD Countries

Health is one of the necessary elements in order to socially develop a society. Providing quality and affordable healthcare is one of the most important challenges facing many nations. Developing and pervading the health services accelerate socio-economic development. Thus, there has been a strong relation between the level of social welfare and health measure. Because development is not only the rate of per capita income, but also includes basis social indicators such as infant mortality rate, life expectancy, health expenditure, and education.Using panel data analysis techniques, this study investigates empirically the relationship between economic growth and infant mortality that is one of the basis variables of health sector over the period 1970-2007 for a sample of 25 high income OECD countries. Our empirical evidence reveals that there is a significant and negative relationship between infant mortality rate and real per capita GDP in selected countries. So, it is concluded that the infant mortality rate of the countries decreased as countries became rich and powerful and new levels of strategic thinking, which will find innovative solutions, have an important role in decreasing infant mortality rate and growing economic power of the countries.