Your birthplace fate or fortune What a privilege it is to have been born in Australia. My parents are third generation farmers and they and their ancestors lived in a small rural and farming community, Kyogle, on the Queensland and New South Wales border. The town has a fluctuating population. According to the census data from 2006, Kyogle’s population is approximately 4110.1 Kyogle Memorial Ho...

BACKGROUND Because of the rapid aging rate, the share of health expenditure in gross domestic product rises irreversibly and increases concern among politicians and the general public. The aim of this study was to examine the accuracy of the Baumol's model of unbalanced growth in Iran over the period 1981-2010. METHODS This theoretical-analytical study was conducted in 2012 to investigate the...

BACKGROUND Breast feeding initiation rates remain below 80% in some Western countries. Many individual-level determinants are known; however, less is known regarding cultural and societal determinants, such as religion, that could explain population-level variations. We examined the correlations of the proportions of Catholics and Protestants with the breast feeding initiation rates across and ...

The paper provides new empirical evidence on factors that determine the profitability of the banking sector of the Republic of Korea. The empirical findings indicate that the banks of the Republic of Korea with high capitalization levels tend to have higher profitability levels. However, the impact of credit is consistently negative under both controlled and uncontrolled macroeconomic and finan...

Currently, many African economies are growing more rapidly than they have for three decades. This is partly the result of high prices for commodity exports but also reflects deeper changes. The last time Africa enjoyed a commodity boom was in the mid-1970s. It was followed by a decade of unparalleled economic disaster. It is vital that Africa’s current opportunities for growth are not dissipate...

If current laws and practices continue, health expenditures in the United States will reach $1.7 trillion by the year 2000, an amount equal to 18.1 percent of the Nation's gross domestic product (GDP). By the year 2030, as America's baby boomers enter their seventies and eighties, health spending will top $16 trillion, or 32 percent of GDP. The projections presented here incorporate the assumpt...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the use of time intervals in the treatment of fractured femurs as indicators of the quality of trauma systems. METHODS Time intervals from injury to admission, admission to surgery and surgery to discharge for patients with isolated femur fractures in four low- and middle-income countries were compared with the corresponding values from one German hospital, an Israeli...

Bacterial meningitis in the African meningitis belt remains 1 of the most serious threats to health. The perceptions regarding meningitis in local populations and the cost of illness for households are not well described. We conducted an anthropologic and economic study in Burkina Faso, in the heart of the meningitis belt. Respondents reported combining traditional and modern beliefs regarding ...

Africa’s disappointing economic performance, the East Asian financial crisis, and the weak record of the former Soviet Union have focused attention on the role of institutions in determining a country’s economic growth. This article critically reviews the literature that tries to link quantitative measures of institutions, such as civil liberties and property rights, with growth of gross domest...

The evidentiary data detailing the economic state of low-income developing and least developed countries (‘LDCs) is both well known and relatively uncontroversial. On the whole, these nations can be characterised as having a low per capita gross domestic product (‘GDP’), unfortunate standards of living and extremely poor levels of health and services. Moreover, these nations have high levels of...