Child health inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa

David Pérez-Mesa, Gustavo Marrero and Sara Darias-Curvo

Economics & Human Biology, 2022, vol. 47, issue C

Abstract: We investigate child height inequality and inequality of predicted height in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region by socioeconomic, demographic and geographical factors. We characterize their changes in age-cohorts (from 0‐1 up to 4‐5 years old) and determine the contribution of each factor to these changes. We extract data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for 33 SSA countries covering the period from 2009 to 2016. Our measure of health is the standardized height of children below the age of five, adjusted by the age and gender distribution in each country. We show that height inequality is lower for older children than for their younger peers. However, the share of inequality caused by our set of factors rises along the age distribution in more than 80% of countries. We find that family background (reflected by maternal education and the household wealth), followed by home infrastructures related to water, toilet and cooking facilities, and the region of residence contribute to explaining the differences observed in child health inequality along the age distribution in SSA.

Keywords: Child health inequality; Child age distribution; Sub-Saharan Africa; Family background; Anthropometric (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Y (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Working Paper: Child health inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:47:y:2022:i:c:s1570677x22000727

DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2022.101176

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