IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/cdiwps/halshs-00556799.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Survival Convergence: Specification Matters

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher Grigoriou

    (CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - UdA - Université d'Auvergne - Clermont-Ferrand I - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

Retaining as a "Millennium Development Goal" a decrease by two thirds in child mortality whatever its initial level assumes that the target elasticity of child mortality may be the same in all the developing countries. We show that such an assumption is not perfectly consistent with the bounded characteristic of the child mortality indicator. We propose to use the logit transformation of such bounded human development indicators to have appropriate estimates of human convergence: this provides the best specification of the overall change in child survival among countries. Applied to child survival on a cross-section basis for 166 countries and over a thirty-year period (1970-99), this measure shows no evidence of absolute convergence but on the contrary a highly significant divergence.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Grigoriou, 2011. "Survival Convergence: Specification Matters," CERDI Working papers halshs-00556799, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:cdiwps:halshs-00556799
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00556799
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00556799/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bhalla, Surjit S & Glewwe, Paul, 1986. "Growth and Equity in Developing Countries: A Reinterpretation of the Sri Lankan Experience," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 1(1), pages 35-63, September.
    2. Bidani, Benu & Ravallion, Martin, 1997. "Decomposing social indicators using distributional data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 125-139, March.
    3. L. G. Godfrey & M. R. Wickens, 1981. "Testing Linear and Log-Linear Regressions for Functional Form," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 48(3), pages 487-496.
    4. Filmer, Deon & Pritchett, Lant, 1997. "Child mortality and public spending on health : how much does money matter?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1864, The World Bank.
    5. Randa Sab & Stephen C. Smith, 2002. "Human Capital Convergence: A Joint Estimation Approach," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 49(2), pages 1-3.
    6. Sudhir Anand & Martin Ravallion, 1993. "Human Development in Poor Countries: On the Role of Private Incomes and Public Services," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 133-150, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christopher GRIGORIOU, 2008. "Survival Convergence: Specification Matters," Working Papers 200815, CERDI.
    2. Patrick GUILLAUMONT & Christopher GRIGORIOU, 2008. "Child Mortality Reacts to Relative Prices," Working Papers 200814, CERDI.
    3. Christopher GRIGORIOU & Patrick GUILLAUMONT, 2003. "A Dynamic Child Survival Function: Natural Convergence and Economic Policy," Working Papers 200333, CERDI.
    4. Mr. Emanuele Baldacci & Mr. Larry Q Cui & Mr. Benedict J. Clements & Mr. Sanjeev Gupta, 2004. "Social Spending, Human Capital, and Growth in Developing Countries: Implications for Achieving the MDGs," IMF Working Papers 2004/217, International Monetary Fund.
    5. ATAKE, Esso - Hanam, 2014. "Financement Public des dépenses de santé et survie infantile au Togo [Public funding of health expenditure and infant survival in Togo]," MPRA Paper 59320, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 26 Oct 2014.
    6. Andrew Sumner & Meera Tiwari, 2005. "Poverty and economic policy: what happens when researchers disagree?," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(6), pages 791-801.
    7. Baldacci, Emanuele & Clements, Benedict & Gupta, Sanjeev & Cui, Qiang, 2008. "Social Spending, Human Capital, and Growth in Developing Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(8), pages 1317-1341, August.
    8. Devdatta Ray & Mikael Linden, 2020. "Health expenditure, longevity, and child mortality: dynamic panel data approach with global data," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 99-119, March.
    9. AfDB AfDB, 2007. "Working Paper 92 - Education Expenditures and School Enrolment in Africa: Illustrations from Nigeria and Other SANE Countries," Working Paper Series 2305, African Development Bank.
    10. Sylvie Lambert & Martin Ravallion & Dominique van de Walle, 2010. "A Micro‐Decomposition Analysis of Aggregate Human Development Outcomes," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 72(2), pages 119-145, April.
    11. AfDB AfDB, 2007. "Working Paper 92 - Education Expenditures and School Enrolment in Africa: Illustrations from Nigeria and Other SANE Countries," Working Paper Series 2225, African Development Bank.
    12. Ravallion, Martin, 2005. "On Measuring Aggregate "Social Efficiency."," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(2), pages 273-292, January.
    13. Marwa Farag & A. Nandakumar & Stanley Wallack & Dominic Hodgkin & Gary Gaumer & Can Erbil, 2013. "Health expenditures, health outcomes and the role of good governance," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 33-52, March.
    14. Gupta, Sanjeev & Verhoeven, Marijn & Tiongson, Erwin R., 2002. "The effectiveness of government spending on education and health care in developing and transition economies," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 717-737, November.
    15. Bienvenido Ortega & Jesús Sanjuán & Antonio Casquero, 2017. "Determinants of efficiency in reducing child mortality in developing countries. The role of inequality and government effectiveness," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 500-516, December.
    16. Ravallion, Martin, 2000. "What can we learn about country performance from conditional comparisons across countries?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2342, The World Bank.
    17. Mukherjee, Anit N., 2007. "Public expenditure on education: A review of selected issues and evidence," Working Papers hd1, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    18. Besstremyannaya, Galina, 2015. "Measuring the effect of health insurance companies on the quality of healthcare systems with kernel and parametric regressions," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 38(2), pages 3-20.
    19. Smith, Lisa C. & Haddad, Lawrence James, 1999. "Explaining child malnutrition in developing countries," FCND discussion papers 60, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    20. Susan Harkness, 2004. "Social and Political Indicators of Human Well-being," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2004-33, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:cdiwps:halshs-00556799. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Contact - CERDI - Université Clermont Auvergne (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.