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The purpose of this paper is to aim at taking a closer look at the decline in the inequality of the distribution of four health variables, infant and child mortality, child stunting and underweight, that took place in various Southeast Asian countries during the past 25 years. More specifically its goal is to check the extent to which this decline in health inequality, as well as the overall reduction in infant and child mortality, in child stunting and underweight, affected the poorest wealth quintile of the population of these countries.

In the first part of the paper the author presents a systematic comparison of the values taken by various consistent measures of the inequality of health attainments and shortfalls for several countries in Southeast Asia and for four health indicators: infant mortality, child mortality, child stunting and underweight. The second part of the paper uses the concept of Shapley decomposition to determine the respective impacts of the decrease in the average value of these health variables and in the inequality of their distribution on the reduction observed for each of these variables in the lowest wealth quintile.

During the period examined there was an important decline infant and child mortality as well as in child stunting and underweight in all countries of Southeast Asia for which data were available. As far as the poorest wealth quintile is concerned this decline was mostly the consequence of the overall decline in these health variables rather than to the reduction of the inequality of their distribution.

Data were available for only four health variables and for many countries data were available for only one period.

A decline in health inequality should be considered as an important aspect of poverty reduction.

Development should not be limited to its economic components. A broader view of development is indispensable.

This study is probably one of the first ones to provide the reader with data on the reduction in health inequality in Southeast Asia as well as on the impact of this decline on the poorest wealth quintile.

The main purpose of this study is to identify and quantify the relative importance of various socioeconomic factors and maternal care practices which may have significant role in determining child mortality at different level of child ages in Pakistan.

This paper examines the role of household, demographic and environment factors as determinants of early children mortality in Pakistan. A number of individual, household and local characteristics are related to the probability of child mortality. This study employed a sequential model which is based on a sequence of binary choice models for the conditional probability of choosing a higher response category.

This study identifies that mother feeding protects children from early exposure to diseases and ill‐health in different ways. It also appeared that mother's education is strongly related to neonatal mortality, infant mortality as well as child mortality not only through the improved child caring practices but also through other proximate determinants such as prenatal care, income and environmental contamination.

Social policies attempting to promote early initiation of mother feeding and utilization of prenatal care could make major contribution to the reduction of under five years mortality in Pakistan

Health care intervention programmes should focus on illiterate mothers whose children have all the cumulative risks due to poor health care utilization.

This could be the first ever effort in describing child mortality status with the help of sequential probit technique for Pakistan.

The purpose of this paper is to establish socio-economic factors and maternal practices that determine child mortality in Uganda.

The paper examines the role of sex, birth weight, birth order and duration of breastfeeding of a child; age, marital status and education of the mother; and household wealth in determining child mortality. The study employs a logistic regression model to establish which of the factors significantly impacts child mortality in Uganda.

The study established that education level, age and marital status of the mother as well as household wealth significantly impact child mortality. Also important are the sex, birth weight, birth order and breastfeeding duration.

Policies aimed at promoting breastfeeding and education of female children can make a significant contribution to the reduction of child mortality in Uganda.

Health care intervention programs should focus on single, poor and uneducated mothers as their children are at great risk due to poor and inadequate health care utilization.

This paper could be the first effort in examining child mortality status in Uganda using a logistic regression model.

The study of war has generally been neglected in sociology, with much of the discussion focusing around military spending or the organization of the military rather than war per se. Sociologists have critiqued and investigated the military-industrial complex (Mills, 1959), investigated morale in military units (Durkheim, 1951; Stouffer & DeVinney, 1955), and studied the socialization of soldiers (Cockerham & Cohen, 1980). However, the direct examination of war has been relatively rare. When war has been examined, sociological research has focused on the causes of war, often discussing the preconditions of revolutions (Goldstone, Gurr & Moshiri, 1991; Skopol, 1979), or the reasons for military interventions by core countries in the peripheral countries of the world system (Kowalewski, 1991). Examinations of the sociological impact of war on civilian populations have been even rarer.

This article examines whether increasing the income of the poor – measured as the income of the lowest quintile – is more beneficial in reducing infant and child mortality rates compared with increases in average income. Given the global importance in reducing infant mortality, the value of this research is important to academics, policymakers and practitioners alike.

Using a sample of 86 countries from 1995–2014 inclusive, our preferred estimation strategy uses an instrumental variable fixed-effects estimator.

Our results propose that the elasticity of the income of the lowest quintile never exceeds that of average income. Therefore, if reducing infant and child mortality is a key policy goal, then boosting average income may be preferable to raising incomes at the lower end of the distribution.

Given these findings, we open a gateway for new literature to add to this unexplored area of research in the income and health relationship.

The 30 MOCHA (Models of Child Health Appraised) countries are diverse socially, culturally and economically, and differences exist in their healthcare systems and in the scope and role of primary care. An economic analysis was undertaken that sought to explain differences in child health outcomes between countries. The conceptual framework was that of a production function for health, whereby health outputs (or outcomes) are assumed affected by several ‘inputs’. In the case of health, inputs include personal (genes, health behaviours) and socio-economic (income, living standards) factors and the structure, organisation and workforce of the healthcare system. Random effects regression modelling was used, based on countries as the unit of analysis, with data from 2004 to 2016 from international sources and published categorisations of healthcare system. The chapter describes the data deficiencies and measurement conundrums faced, and how these were addressed. In the absence of consistent indicators of child health outcomes across countries, five mortality measures were used: neonatal, infant, under five years, diabetes (0–19 years) and epilepsy (0–19 years). Factors found associated with reductions in mortality were as follows: gross domestic product per capita growth (neonatal, infant, under five years), higher density of paediatricians (neonatal, infant, under five years), less out-of-pocket expenditure (neonatal, diabetes 0–19), state-based service provision (epilepsy 0–19) and lower proportions of children in the population, a proxy for family size (all outcomes). Findings should be interpreted with caution due to the ecological nature of the analysis and the limitations presented by the data and measures employed.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically assess the effect of public health expenditure on child mortality in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region in comparison to the developing world as a whole and the region of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

This study used panel data extracted from the World Development Indicators database for the period 2000–2013 for 98 developing countries including 15 SADC countries. A dynamic panel data model of child mortality was estimated using the system generalized method of moments technique.

Results indicate that public health expenditure has a statistically significant effect on reducing infant and under-five mortality rates in the developing world, and that this effect is strongest in the SADC. Immunization and female literacy contributed significantly to the prevention of deaths of infants and children under five in developing countries. In the region of SSA, improved water sources and the reduction in the prevalence of HIV were found to be effective in reducing childhood mortality. There was little evidence for the benefit of higher GDP per capita.

The findings of this study suggest four policy areas which should be prioritized in public health spending to achieve better health among children: ensuring that females have better access to education, providing immunizations, intensifying interventions against the spread of HIV/AIDS, and improving water and sanitation infrastructure.

This study, which shows that the benefits of public health expenditure may be augmented by regional collaborations like the SADC, is one of the first to explore regional heterogeneity in the effectiveness of public health expenditure for the improvement of children’s health across the developing world.

Health improves the proficiency and output generated by individuals. It also raises physical as well as mental abilities, which are required for the growth and advancement of any economy. Many infant diseases have been recognised via contemporary technology in a bid to tackle these diseases. However, children within the African continent (Including Nigeria) die en masse from diseases. This has made the government of Nigeria allocate sizeable part of the nation's budget to healthcare system. The allocation to health is, however, yet to translate to improved health condition for Nigerians. It does not measure up to the World Health Organization's (WHO) standards for apportioning budget to the health sector. This study also analyses empirically the impact of healthcare expenses on the mortality level of infants as well as Nigeria's neonatal mortality level.

The paper focuses on Nigeria. Vector auto regression model techniques, unit root tests and cointegration test were carried out using time series date for the period between 1986 and 2016.

The outcome has revealed that expenditure on healthcare possesses a negative correlation with the mortality of infants and neonates. The study discovers that if the Nigerian government raises and maintains health expenditure specifically on activities focused on minimising infant mortality, it will translate to reduction in infant mortality in Nigeria.

This paper has contributed exhaustively to solution to poor expenditure on healthcare, especially child mortality, in Nigeria.

Children are the most vulnerable group owing to long lasting impact of the violation of human rights in term of proper nutrition and their right to live. The purpose of this paper is to assess the risk of child mortality associated with size of child at birth and mother’s anemia level in northern India.

The data were used from 2015–2016 National Family Health Survey (NFHS). The participants (n = 41,412) were children aged under-five years from north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The main outcome measure was child deaths defined by under-five mortality. The univariate, bivariate and multivariate analyses were used in data analysis. Kaplan–Meier analyses, Log-rank tests and Cox’s regression analyses were performed to fulfill the objective of the study.

There were a total of 2,835 deaths out of 41,412 births in the past five years preceding the survey period. Children of very small size at birth were significantly two and half times more likely to die than children of average size at birth. The estimated adjusted hazard ratio indicated that the children of severely anemic mothers were significantly 1.5 times more likely to die compared to children of not anemic mothers. Size of child at birth, mother’s anemia level, mother’s age at time of her first birth, wealth index and mother’s education were significantly associated with the under-five mortality in northern India.

The limitation of this study is recall errors arising from the dates of birth and death given by women interviewed in the survey were minimized by restricting the analyses to births within the five-year period preceding the survey.

This study advocates the promotion of comprehensive prevention strategies through appropriate institutional mechanism would be the best intervention or adaptive mechanism to reduce the adverse impact of size of child at birth, mother’s anemia level on under-five mortality in Uttar Pradesh, India.

This research is original. This study enjoys a unique importance by exploring effect of size of child at birth and mother’s anemia on child survival in developing countries like India.

This paper addresses revolutionary changes in the education, fertility and market work of U.S. families formed in the 1870s–1920s: Fertility fell from 5.3 to 2.6; the graduation rate of their children increased from 7% to 50%; and the fraction of adulthood wives devoted to market-oriented work increased from 7% to 23% (by one measure).

These trends are addressed within a unified framework to examine the ability of several proposed mechanisms to quantitatively replicate these changes. Based on careful calibration, the choices of successive generations of representative husband-and-wife households over the quantity and quality of their children, household production, and the extent of mother’s involvement in market-oriented production are simulated.

Rising wages, declining mortality, a declining gender wage gap, and increased efficiency and public provision of schooling cannot, individually or in combination, reduce fertility or increase stocks of human capital to levels seen in the data. The best fit of the model to the data also involves: (1) a decreased tendency among parents to view potential earnings of children as the property of parents and (2) rising consumption shares per dependent child.

Greater attention should be given the determinants of parental control of the work and earnings of children for this period.

One contribution is the gathering of information and strategies necessary to establish an initial baseline, and the time paths for parameters and targets for this period beset with data limitations. A second contribution is identifying the contributions of various mechanisms toward reaching those calibration targets.