In developing countries, households’ inability to smooth consumption is thought to make health vulnerable to adverse economic events. However, studies suggesting this relationship often examine phenomena that influence health independently of household economic circumstances. We address this difficulty by investigating how world coffee price shocks influence child survival in Colombia’s coffee-growing regions, highlighting two important facts: (1) The most important determinants of child health are inexpensive but require large amounts of time, and (2) As the value of time declines with falling coffee prices, so does the relative price of health. Conceptualizing coffee price shocks as changes in the return to coffee-related work (for institutional reasons), we find that the substitution effect dominates the income effect in this context: time-intensive health investments are countercyclical, and mortality at young ages is procyclical. These findings are consistent with growing evidence that the relative price of health is a more powerful determinant of mortality than wealth.