An Incidence Analysis of Recent Child Health and Education Improvements in Africa

Economic growth in Africa has accelerated over the past 10-15 years, welcome news that is widely discussed, including in the popular press. As economies grow, however, some analysts have expressed concerns that such growth is not adequately pro-poor, shared, or inclusive. Less noticed, but equally important, is the fact that improvements in children’s health in Africa are accelerating, too. This chapter examines the extent to which these health improvements are equitably shared or inclusive. We use a descriptive method, which builds upon Klasen (2008) for this analysis that is analogous to growth incidence curves, and apply it to four African countries over the past two decades. We draw two principal conclusions. First, within countries, health improvements often have a more pro-poor distribution than income/expenditure growth. Second, we have yet to see clear patterns across countries in the relationship between growth incidence curves and health improvement incidence curves