Why do over 20% of children die in some poor countries, while in others only 2% die? Weexamine this question using survey data covering 278,000 children in 45 low-income countries.We find that parents' education and a mother's propensity to seek out modern healthcare areempirically important when explaining child survival, while the prevalence of common diseases,along with infrastructure such as improved water and sanitation, are not. Using a GINIcoefficient we construct for treatment services, we find that public and private health systems are"equally unequal", that is, both tend to favor children in relatively well-off households, andneither appears superior at improving outcomes in very poor communities. These facts contrastwith a common view that a much-expanded public health sector is necessary to reduce childmortality. Instead, we believe the empirical evidence points to the essential role of parents asadvocates for their child's health. If we can provide better health knowledge and generaleducation to parents, a private healthcare sector can arise to meet demand. We provide evidencethat this alternative route to low mortality is indeed a reason behind the current success of manycountries with low child mortality, including Vietnam, Indonesia, Egypt, and the Indian state ofKerala. Finally, we calculate a realistic package of interventions that target education, healthknowledge and treatment seeking could reduce child mortality by 32%.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Centre for Economic Performance, LSE in its series CEP Discussion Papers with number
dp0751.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
Related research
Keywords:
Find related papers by JEL classification: I00 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - General - - - General I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Production I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)