— This study departs from extant work on diversity and development in several respects. Using DHS data from a large number of developing countries, we adopt four human development outcomes: child mortality, fertility, education, and wealth. We exploit evidence at multiple levels—country, subnational region, and district—and we measure diversity in a variety of ways. This unique approach reveals...

background: the human development index (hdi) is a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and income per capita indicators, which apart from measuring the socio-economic development of countries can predict health outcomes. the current study aimed at determination of the effects of hdi individual components on infant and child mortality. materials and methods: at a cross- sectional ...

Health inequalities are no longer an issue only for developed countries. In recent years there is agreement that all countries present health inequalities regardless of their level of wealth. In low-income countries and especially in sub-Saharan Africa where the majority of the poor people live as well as their children, research on child health inequalities is still scarce. This review of evid...

Apart from social, economic and environmental conditions, parity is one of the important factors responsible for infant and child mortality, In the present area of study the influence of most of the socioeconomic factors on child mortality is absent and hence parity may be identified as a responsible factor for mortality. Analytical results show that high parity women have higher child loss.

The content and landscape of global child health is increasingly complex. There is strong evidence for the effectiveness of local, national and institutional leadership in reducing child mortality, but this has not been a focus of global health initiatives. Interventions to strengthen health systems should include support for local leadership: building-up institutions of training, empowering na...

If fertility reflects the choice of households, results of their choice (duration between successive births and health of the children) cannot be considered to be determined randomly. Most existing studies of child health, however, tend to overlook the effects of fertility selection on child health. This paper argues that not accounting for this selection issue yields biased estimates and it is...

Article history: Received 11 October 2014 Received in revised form 26 January 2015 Accepted 26 January 2015 Available online xxxx Regional differences in cognitive ability are presented for 33 states and union territories of India. Ability was positively correlated with GDP per capita, literacy and life expectancy and negatively correlated with infant and child mortality, fertility and the perc...

The empirical literature on the impact of HIV on the quality (Q) and quantity (N) of children provides limited and somewhat mixed evidence. This study introduces individual HIV risk perceptions, as a predictor of mortality, into a Q-N investment model. In this model, higher maternal mortality predicts lower N while higher child mortality predicts lower Q. Thus the two effects together make like...

Many scholars claim that democracy improves the welfare of the poor. This article uses data on infant and child mortality to challenge this claim. Cross-national studies tend to exclude from their samples nondemocratic states that have performed well; this leads to the mistaken inference that nondemocracies have worse records than democracies. Once these and other flaws are corrected, democracy...