We examine the effect of health facility delivery on newborn mortality in Malawi using data from a survey of mothers in the Chimutu district, Malawi. The study exploits labour contraction time as an instrumental variable to overcome endogeneity of health facility delivery. The results show that health facility delivery does not reduce 7-day and 28-day mortality rates. In a low-income country like Malawi where the healthcare quality is severely compromised, we conclude that encouraging health facility delivery may not guarantee positive health outcomes for newborn births.
Keywords: Distance to health facilities; Health facility delivery; Labour contraction time; Newborn mortality.
© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.