Effects of International Sanctions on Age-Specific Mortality: A Cross-National Panel Data Analysis

The article examines the effects of sanctions on age-specific mortality rates in cross-country panel data using methods designed to address causal identification in observational data. In particular, it uses a panel dataset of age-specific mortality rates and sanctions episodes for 152 countries between 1971 and 2021. The authors' findings showed a significant causal association between sanctions and increased mortality. The authors found the strongest effects for unilateral, economic, and US sanctions, whereas they found no statistical evidence of an effect for UN sanctions. They stressed that sanctions have substantial adverse effects on public health, with a death toll similar to that of wars.