This study explores global inequality in health status, and decomposes it into within-and between-country inequality. We rely on standardized height indicators as our health indicator since they avoid the measurement pitfalls of more traditional measures of health such as morbidity, mortality and life expectancy. They also avoid measurement problems associated with using incomes across time or place to compare welfare. Our calculation of world height inequality indicates that in contrast with similar research on income inequality, within-country variation is the source of most inequality, rather than the differences between countries.

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We analyse the school participation decision of children between 13 and 18 years in Indonesia using the 1992 SUSENAS household survey. Our focus is on which household factors determine enrolment and delayed enrolment. We use the multinomial fixed effect model where the cluster‐specific fixed effects correct for any regional‐specific factors that may influence the demand for education. The model is estimated by conditional maximum likelihood. We find that parent's education has a positive effect on enrolment, where the effects are stronger for boys than for girls. On the other hand, literacy of parents has stronger effects on the girls education than on the boys'. The model without fixed effects is rejected against the model with fixed effects. Hence, omitting regional variation in the model would have led to biased estimates.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

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