Health economics
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This paper argues that indicators of anthropometric shortfall - especially low height and low weight-for-age - are uniquely suited for assessing absolute deprivation in developing countries. Anthropometric indicators are relatively precise, readily available for most countries, reflect the preferences and concerns of many poor people, consistent with reckoning the phenomenon directly in the space of functionings, intuitive, easy to use for advocacy, and consistent over time and across subgroups. ⋯ In addition, the paper analyses spells of change in malnutrition over time, finding that the association between economic growth and chronic child malnutrition is very small (but statistically significant) and much lower than the elasticity of growth on poverty. The policy implication of this finding is that direct interventions aimed at reducing infant malnutrition are required.
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This paper looks at health inequality and deprivation, with a particular focus on developing countries. It is specifically concerned with relationships between health and income, especially the extent to which inequality and deprivation in the former is driven by changes in the latter. The paper reports increasing disparity in child mortality among country groups since the mid-1970s. ⋯ Similar patterns in life expectancy deprivation are reported. The paper finds that this is partly due to a changing behavioural relationship between life expectancy and income per capita among countries with low achievement in the former variable. The paper also introduces and provides an overview of the papers that follow in this Supplement.