IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaea10/61323.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Child Undernutrition, Household Poverty and National Income in Developing Countries: Quantile Regression Results

Author

Listed:
  • Block, Steven A.
  • Masters, William A.
  • Bhagowalia, Priya

Abstract

The eradication of child undernutrition and extreme poverty are important objectives for most societies. Countries with higher national incomes usually improve in both dimensions, but not always at the same rate. Using quantile regression, we show that poverty rates tend to decline with increased income at a roughly constant elasticity. In contrast, while the prevalence of child underweight declines at that same elasticity where it is most widespread, the elasticity becomes smaller as underweight becomes less prevalent. This finding suggests a need for increasingly targeted interventions to achieve a given reduction in undernutrition as its prevalence declines.

Suggested Citation

  • Block, Steven A. & Masters, William A. & Bhagowalia, Priya, 2010. "Child Undernutrition, Household Poverty and National Income in Developing Countries: Quantile Regression Results," 2010 Annual Meeting, July 25-27, 2010, Denver, Colorado 61323, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea10:61323
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.61323
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/61323/files/BMB_NutrPov_AAEA-SelectedPaper10644.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.61323?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Theo S Eicher & Cecilia Garcia Penalosa, "undated". "Inequality and Growth," Working Papers 0083, University of Washington, Department of Economics.
    2. Erich Battistin & Richard Blundell & Arthur Lewbel, 2009. "Why Is Consumption More Log Normal than Income? Gibrat's Law Revisited," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(6), pages 1140-1154, December.
    3. Foster, James & Greer, Joel & Thorbecke, Erik, 1984. "A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 761-766, May.
    4. Moshe Buchinsky, 1998. "Recent Advances in Quantile Regression Models: A Practical Guideline for Empirical Research," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 33(1), pages 88-126.
    5. Lawrence Haddad & Harold Alderman & Simon Appleton & Lina Song & Yisehac Yohannes, 2003. "Reducing Child Malnutrition: How Far Does Income Growth Take Us?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 17(1), pages 107-131, June.
    6. Rasmus Heltberg, 2009. "Malnutrition, poverty, and economic growth," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(S1), pages 77-88, April.
    7. Kalwij, Adriaan & Verschoor, Arjan, 2007. "Not by growth alone: The role of the distribution of income in regional diversity in poverty reduction," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(4), pages 805-829, May.
    8. Timothy Besley & Robin Burgess, 2003. "Halving Global Poverty," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 3-22, Summer.
    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. Augustin Kwasi Fosu, 2009. "Inequality and the Impact of Growth on Poverty: Comparative Evidence for Sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(5), pages 726-745.
    2. Bluhm R & Crombrugghe D.P.I. de & Szirmai A., 2013. "The pace of poverty reduction - A fractional response approach," MERIT Working Papers 2013-051, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    3. Florent Bresson, 2010. "A general class of inequality elasticities of poverty," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(1), pages 71-100, March.
    4. Vincenzo Lombardo, 2011. "Growth and Inequality Effects on Poverty Reduction in Italy," Rivista italiana degli economisti, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 2, pages 241-280.
    5. Richard Bluhm & Denis de Crombrugghe & Adam Szirmai, 2016. "Poverty Accounting. A fractional response approach to poverty decomposition," Working Papers 413, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    6. B. Essama‐Nssah & Peter J. Lambert, 2009. "Measuring Pro‐Poorness: A Unifying Approach With New Results," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(3), pages 752-778, September.
    7. Desire Avom & Fabrizio Carmignani & Abdour Chowdhury, "undated". "Four Scenarios of Poverty Reduction and the Role of Economic Policy," MRG Discussion Paper Series 3109, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    8. Fosu, Augustin Kwasi, 2017. "Growth, inequality, and poverty reduction in developing countries: Recent global evidence," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 306-336.
    9. Sinha, Kompal & Davillas, Apostolos & Jones, Andrew M. & Sharma, Anurag, 2021. "Do socioeconomic health gradients persist over time and beyond income? A distributional analysis using UK biomarker data," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    10. Kalwij, Adriaan & Verschoor, Arjan, 2007. "Not by growth alone: The role of the distribution of income in regional diversity in poverty reduction," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(4), pages 805-829, May.
    11. Erumban, Abdul A. & de Vries, Gaaitzen J., 2024. "Structural change and poverty reduction in developing economies," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    12. Yerrabati, Sridevi, 2022. "Does vulnerable employment alleviate poverty in developing countries?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    13. Verner, Dorte, 2008. "Making poor Haitians count--poverty in rural and urban Haiti based on the first household survey for Haiti," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4571, The World Bank.
    14. Headey, Derek & Hoddinott, John & Ali, Disha & Tesfaye, Roman & Dereje, Mekdim, 2015. "The Other Asian Enigma: Explaining the Rapid Reduction of Undernutrition in Bangladesh," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 749-761.
    15. Nicholas Apergis & Oguzhan Dincer & James E. Payne, 2011. "On the dynamics of poverty and income inequality in US states," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 38(2), pages 132-143, May.
    16. Takeshi Daimon, 2001. "The Spatial Dimension of Welfare and Poverty: Lessons from a Regional Targeting Program in Indonesia," Working Papers EMS_2001_04, Research Institute, International University of Japan.
    17. Ogutu, Sylvester Ochieng & Qaim, Matin, 2019. "Commercialization of the small farm sector and multidimensional poverty," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 281-293.
    18. Adriaan Kalwij & Arjan Verschoor, 2005. "A Decomposition of Poverty Trends Across Regions: the Role of Variation in the Income and Inequality Elasticities of Poverty," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2005-36, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    19. Derek D. Headey & Marie T. Ruel, 2022. "Economic shocks predict increases in child wasting prevalence," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-9, December.
    20. Yasuyuki Sawada & Jonna P. Estudillo, 2006. "Trade, Migration, and Poverty Reduction in the Globalizing Economy: The Case of the Philippines," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2006-58, 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:ags:aaea10:61323. 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: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    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.