Abstract
The literature on the contributions to poverty reduction of average improvements in living standards vs. distributional changes uses only one measure of well-being – income or expenditure. Given that poverty is defined by deprivation over different dimensions, we explore the role of average improvements and distributional changes in children’s health and nutrition using the height of young children as our measure of well-being. Similar to the income literature, we find that shifts in the mean level of heights, not changes in distribution, account for most improvements in heights. Unlike the literature on income inequality, however, there is a positive association between improvements in average heights and reduced dispersion of those heights.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alderman, H. and Garcia, M.: Food security and health security: Explaining the levels of nutritional status in Pakistan, Economic Development and Cultural Change 42(3) (1994), 485–507.
Alesina, A. and Rodrik, D.: Distributive policies and economic growth, Quarterly Journal of Economics 109 (1994), 465–490.
Anand, S. and Kanbur, S.M.R.: The Kuznets process and the inequality-development relationship, Journal of Development Economics 40(1) (1993), 25–52.
Appleton, S. and Song, L.: Income and human development at the household level: Evidence from six countries, Mimeo, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford, Oxford, 1999.
Balisacan, A.: Growth, redistribution and poverty: Is the Philippines an exception to the standard Asian story? Journal of the Asian Pacific Economy 5(1/2) (2000), 125–140.
Barro, R.: Inequality, growth, and investment, NBER Working Paper 7038, Cambridge, MA, 1999.
Beaton, G.H., Kelly, A., Kevany, J., Martorell, R. and Mason, J.: Appropriate uses of anthropometric indices in children: A report based on an ACC/SCN workshop, United Nations Administrative Committee on Coordination/Subcommittee on Nutrition ACC/SCN State-of-the-Art Series, Nutrition Policy Discussion Paper No. 7, New York, 1990.
Behrman, J.R. and Deolalikar, A.B.: Health and nutrition, In: H. Chenery and T.N. Srinivasan (eds.), Handbook of Development Economics, Vol. 1, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1988, pp. 631–711.
Bhalla, S. and Glewwe, P.: Growth and equity in developing countries: A reinterpretation of the Sri Lankan experience, World Bank Economic Review 1(1) (1986), 35–63.
Bigsten, A., Kebede, B., Shimeles, A. and Taddesse, M.: Growth and poverty reduction in Ethiopia: Evidence from household panel surveys, World Development 31(1) (2003), 87–106.
Bourguignon, F. and Chakravarty, S.R.: The measurement of multidimensional poverty, DELTA Working Paper, Paris, 1998, pp. 98–112.
Bruno, M., Ravallion, M. and Squire, L.: Equity and growth in developing countries: Old and new perspectives on the police issues, In: A. Solimano, E. Aninat and N. Birdsall (eds.), Development and Inequality in the Market Economy Series, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2000, pp. 37–65.
Bustos, P., Amigo, H., Muñoz, S.R. and Martorell, R.: Growth in indigenous and nonindigenous Chilean schoolchildren from 3 poverty strata, American Journal of Public Health 91(10) (2001), 1645–1649.
Chen, S. and Ravallion, M.: How did the world’s poorest fare in the 1990s, Policy Research Working Paper, World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000.
Christiaensen, L., Demery, L. and Paternostro, S.: Growth, distribution and poverty in Africa. Messages from the 1990s, The World Bank Working Paper 2810, Washington, DC, 2002.
Cole, T.J. and Parkin, J.M.: Infection and its effect on growth of young children: A comparison of the Gambia and Uganda, Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 71 (1977), 196–198.
Contoyannis, P. and Forster, M.: The distribution of health and income: A theoretical framework, Journal of Health Economics 18 (1999), 605–622.
Cornia, G.A., Jolly, R. and Stewart, F.: Adjustment with a Human Face, Clarendon Press, New York; Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987.
Crawford, I.A.: Nonparametric tests of stochastic dominance in bivariate distributions, with an application to UK, University College London Discussion Papers in Economics 99/07, 1999.
Datt, G. and Ravallion, M.: Growth and redistribution components of changes in poverty measures: A decomposition with applications to Brazil and India in the 1980s, Journal of Development Economics 38(2) (1992), 275–295.
Deaton, A.: The Analysis of Household Surveys: A Microeconometric Approach to Development Policy, Johns Hopkins University Press for The World Bank, Baltimore and London, 1997.
Deaton, A. and Grosh, M.: Consumption, In: M. Grosh and P. Glewwe (eds.), Designing Household Survey Questionnaires for Developing Countries: Lessons from Fifteen Years of the Living Standards Measurement Study, Vol. 1, World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000, pp. 91–133.
Demery, L. and Mehra, K.: Measuring poverty over time: Dealing with uncooperative data in Ghana, Mimeo, Poverty, Gender and Public Management Department, The World Bank, Washington, DC, 1996.
Dhongde, S.: Measuring the impact of growth and income distribution on poverty in India, Mimeo, Department of Economics, University of California, Riverside, 2002.
Dollar, D. and Kraay, A.: Growth is good for the poor, Journal of Economic Growth 7(3) (2002), 195–225.
Dreze, J. and Sen, A.: Hunger and Public Action, WIDER Studies in Development Economics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1989.
Duclos, J.-Y., Sahn, D.E. and Younger, S.D.: Robust multidimensional poverty comparisons, Cornell Food and Nutrition Policy Program Working Paper No. 98, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 2004.
Fields, G.S.: Changes in poverty and inequality in developing countries, World Bank Research Observer 4(2) (1989), 167–185.
Forsythe, N., Korzeniewicz, R.P. and Durrant, V.: Gender inequalities and economic growth: A longitudinal evaluation, Economic Development and Cultural Change 48(3) (2000), 573–617.
Graitcher, P.L. and Gentry, E.M.: Measuring children: One reference for all, Lancet ii (1981), 297–299.
Habicht, J.-P., Martorell, R., Yarbrough, C., Malina, R.M. and Klein, R.E.: Height and weight standards for preschool children. How relevant are ethnic differences in growth potential? Lancet I (1974), 611–614.
Jain, L.R. and Tendulkar, S.D.: The role of growth and distribution in the observed change in head-count ratio-measure of poverty: A decomposition exercise for India, Indian Economic Review 25(2) (1990), 165–205.
Kakwani, N.: On measuring growth and inequality components of changes in poverty with application to Thailand, Mimeo, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, 1997.
Kakwani, N. and Subbararo, K.: Rural poverty and its alleviation in India, Economic and Political Weekly 25 (1990), A2–A16.
Kuznets, S.: Economic growth and income inequality, American Economic Review 45 (1955), 1–28.
Lecallion, J., Paukert, F., Morrison, C. and Germidis, D.: Income Distribution and Economic Development: An Analytical Survey, ILO, Geneva, 1984.
Martorell, R., Habicht, J.-P., Yarbrough, C., Lechtig, A., Klein, R.E. and Western, K.A.: Acute morbidity and physical growth in rural Guatemalan children, American Journal of Diseases in Childhood 129 (1975), 1296–1301.
Martorell, R. and Habicht, J.-P.: Growth in early childhood in developing countries, In: F. Falkner and J.M. Tanner (eds.), Human Growth: A Comprehensive Treatise, Plenum Press, New York, 1986, pp. 241–262.
Mata, L.: The Children of Santa Maria Cauque: A Prospective Field Study of Health and Growth, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1978.
McCulloch, N., Cherel-Robson, M. and Baluch, B.: Growth, inequality and poverty in Mauritania 1987–96, Mimeo, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, 2000.
Mkandawire, P.T. and Soludo, C.C.: Our Continent, Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment, Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ, 1999.
Mosley, W.H. and Chen, L.C.: An analytical framework for the study of child survival in developing countries, Population and Development Review 10(0) (1984), 25–45.
Persson, T. and Tabellini, G.: Is inequality harmful for growth? American Economic Review 84(3) (1994), 600–621.
Pradhan, M.: How many questions should be in a consumption questionnaire? Evidence from a repeated experiment in Indonesia, Cornell Food and Nutrition Policy Program Working Paper No. 112, Ithaca, NY, 2000.
Pradhan, M., Sahn, D.E. and Younger, S.D.: Decomposing world health inequality, Journal of Health Economics 22(2) (2003), 271–293.
Preston, S.H. and Taubman, P.: Socioeconomic differences in adult mortality and health status, In: L.G. Martin and S.H. Preston (eds.), Demography of Aging, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1994, pp. 279–318.
Ravallion, M.: Growth and poverty: Evidence for developing countries in the 1980s, Economics Letters 48 (1995), 411–417.
Ravallion, M.: Growth, inequality and poverty: Looking beyond the averages, World Development 29(11) (2001), 1803–1815.
Ravallion, M. and Chen, S.: What can new survey data tell us about recent changes in distribution and poverty, World Bank Economic Review 11(2) (1995), 327–338.
Sahn, D.E. and Stifel, D.: Poverty comparisons over time and across countries in Africa, World Development 28(12) (2000), 2123–2155.
Sahn, D.E. and Stifel, D.: Parental preferences for nutrition of boys and girls: Evidence from Africa, The Journal of Development Studies 39(1) (2002), 21–45.
Sahn, D.E. and Alderman, H.: On the determinants of nutrition in Mozambique: The importance of age-specific effects, World Development 25(4) (1997), 577–588.
Sahn, D.E., Dorosh, P.A. and Younger, S.D.: Structural Adjustment Reconsidered: Economic Policy and Poverty in Africa, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997.
Saith, A.: Development and distribution: A critique of the cross-country U-hypothesis, Journal of Development Economics 13(3) (1983), 367–382.
Scott, C. and Amenuvegbe, B.: Effect of recall duration on reporting of household expenditures: An experimental study in Ghana, Social Dimensions of Adjustment in Sub-Saharan Africa Working Paper 6, The World Bank, Washington, DC, 1990.
Scrimshaw, N.S., Taylor, C.E. and Gordon, J.E.: Interactions of Nutrition and Infection, World Health Organization Monograph Series 57, WHO, Geneva, 1968.
Sen, A.: Personal utilities and public judgment: Or what’s wrong with welfare economics? Economic Journal 89 (1979), 537–558.
Sen, A.: Commodities and Capabilities, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1985.
Sen, A.: The standard of living: Lecture II, lives and capabilities, In: G. Hawthorn (ed.), The Standard of Living, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987, pp. 20–38.
Shorrocks, A. and Kolenikov, S.: Poverty trends in Russia during the transition, Mimeo, World Institute of Development Research, Helsinki and University of North Carolina, 2001.
Squire, L.: Fighting poverty, American Economic Review 83(2) (1993), 377–382.
Strauss, J. and Thomas, D.: Empirical modeling of household and family decisions, In: J. Behrman and T.N. Srinivasan (eds.), Handbook of Development Economics, Vol. IIIA, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1995, pp. 1883–2023.
Tanner, J.M.: A History of the Study of Human Growth, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1981.
Ulijaszek, S.: Ethnic differences in patterns of human growth in stature, In: R. Martorell and F. Hasachke (eds.), Nutrition and Growth, Nestec, Ltd., Vevey, Switzerland, 2001, pp. 1–20.
van Doorslaer, E., Wagstaff, A., Bleichrodt, H., Calonge, S., Gerdtham, U.G., Gerfin, M., Geurts, J., Gross, L., Hakkinen, U., Leu, R.E., O’Donnell, O., Propper, C., Puffer, F., Rodriguez, M., Sundberg, G. and Winkelhake, O.: Income-related inequalities in health: Some international comparisons, Journal of Health Economics 16(1) (1997), 93–112.
Wagstaff, A., Paci, P. and van Doorslaer, E.: On the measurement of inequalities in health, Social Science and Medicine 33 (1991), 545–557.
Ware, J., Davies-Avery, A. and Brook, R.: Analysis of relationships among health status measures, In: Conceptualization and Measurement of Health Status for Adults in the Health Insurance Study, Vol. VI, R-1987/6-HEW, RAND, Santa Monica, CA, 1980.
WHO (World Health Organization): Measuring Change in Nutritional Status: Guidelines for Assessing the Nutritional Impact of Supplementary Feeding Programmes for Vulnerable Groups, WHO, Geneva, 1983.
WHO (World Health Organization): Physical Status: The Use and Interpretation of Anthropometry: Report of WHO Expert Committee, WHO, Geneva, 1995.
World Bank: World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty, Oxford University Press, London, 2000.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sahn, D.E., Younger, S.D. Improvements in children’s health: Does inequality matter?. J Econ Inequal 3, 125–143 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-005-4494-9
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-005-4494-9