Prices, infrastructure, household characteristics and child height☆

https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3878(92)90042-8Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open archive

Abstract

The relation between parental characteristics, community characteristics and child height is examined using Brazilian household survey data, matched with information collected at the municipio level. Child height is significantly affected by local infrastructure, particularly the availability of modern sewerage, piped water and electricity. Higher sugar and dairy prices are associated with lower child height, although mothers with at least elementary schooling are able to counteract the deleterious impact of prices. Negative price effects are, however, largest for children in higher expenditure households suggesting that the impact of mother's education on child height does not solely reflect resource availability.

Cited by (0)

☆

Financial support from National Institutes of Health grant P50-HD12639-11 and from the Economic Growth Center is gratefully acknowledged. Mauricio de Vasconcellos and Maria Helena Henriques provided invaluable help in understanding the data. We have benefited from the comments of Ricardo Barros, Jere Behrman, Sue Horton, Deborah Levison, Alberto Palloni, Guilherme Sedlacek and two anonymous referees. K. Bruce Tustin and Michele Siegl were excellent research assistants.

Copyright © 1992 Published by Elsevier B.V.