The effect of economic crises on child health is a topic of great policy importance. The authors use data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to analyze the impact of the profound 1988-92 economic crisis in Peru on infant mortality and anthropometrics. They show that there was an...

The author empirically explores the relationship between household poverty and the incidence and treatment of fever--as an indicator of malaria--among children in Sub-Saharan Africa. He uses household Demographic and Health Survey data collected in the 1990s from 22 countriesin which malaria is...

By the end of 1999, an estimated 24.5 million Africans were living with HIV/AIDS, accounting for more that seventy percent of all global infections. In Tanzania, an estimated 1.3 million people (of a total population of 33 million) were believed to be infected with HIV, and 140,000 had already...

HIV prevalence in Southern Africa is the highest in the world and the impact of HIV/AIDS in the region are devastating at all levels of society, including the wider economy. Government response has lagged behind the pace of the epidemic, but programs are now beginning to focus on a broad range...

Health facility surveys come in various guises. One dimension in which they vary is their motivation. Some seek to understand better links between households and providers. Others seek to understand better provider behavior and performance. Still others seek to understand the interrelationships...

Are the poor less healthy? Does public health spending matter more to them? The authors decompose aggregate health indicators using a random coefficients model in which the aggregates are regressed on the population distribution by subgroups, taking account of the statistical properties of the...

Within a short span of human history, a secular decline in fertility has taken place around the world. The timing and pace of this decline correspond broadly with changes in sociopolitical institutions indifferent parts of the world. The author hypothesizes that this shift in childbearing...

Paqueo and Gonzalez look at the determinants of health-seeking behavior of the Mexican population and within this context focus on the effect of ethnicity. They address the following questions: To what extent are the indigenous people at a disadvantage health care-wise and in what particular...

The authors provide an empirical analysis of the determinants of three child-health outcomes related to the Millennium Development Goals: the infant mortality rate, the child mortality rate, and the prevalence of malnutrition. Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys, they go beyond...

Vietnam's rapid economic growth in the 1990s greatly increased the incomes of Vietnamese households, which led to a dramatic decline in poverty. Over the same period, child malnutrition rates in Vietnam, as measured by low height for age in children under 5, fell from 50 percent in 1992-93 to 34...