Child health in rural Colombia: determinants and policy interventions

Abstract

In this paper we study the determinants of child anthropometrics on a sample of poor Colombian children living in small municipalities. We focus on the influence of household consumption, and public infrastructure. We take into account the endogeneity of household consumption using two different sets of instruments: household assets and municipality average wage. We find that household consumption is an important determinant of child health. The importance of the effect is confirmed by the two different sets of instruments. We find that using ordinary least squares would lead to conclude that the importance of household consumption is much smaller than the instrumental variable estimates suggest. The presence of a public hospital in the municipality positively influences child health. The extent of the piped water network positively influences the health of children if their parents have at least some education. The number of hours of growth and development check-ups is also an important determinant of child health. We find that some of these results only show up once squared and interaction terms have been included in the regression. Overall, our estimates suggest that both public and private investments are important to improve child health in poor environments.

Maternal Education and Micro-Geographic Disparities in Nutritional Status among School-Aged Children in Rural Northwestern China

“…Child height-for-age z score (HAZ) was generated by using WHO 2007 reference values [32] and comparable across different ages and genders. HAZ measure is accepted as a particularly good and robust indicator of overall child health as it is a measure of long-term or chronic malnourishment and doesn’t fluctuate with short-term malnutrition [1], [2]. Stunting is defined as HAZ of less than minus two standard deviation (-2 SD) of the mean of WHO reference 2007 [32].…”

“…Child linear growth as measured by height for age Z score (HAZ) is internationally recognized as a robust indicator of nutritional and health status [1], [2]. Stunting, linear growth failure (low HAZ), indicates chronic under-nutrition and reflects the cumulative effects of under-nutrition, recurrent infections, inadequate child care and poor socioeconomic environments.…”

Comparison of physical, public and human assets as determinants of socioeconomic inequalities in contraceptive use in Colombia - moving beyond the household wealth index

“…The underlying hypotheses were: a) socioeconomic inequalities in contraceptive use associated with Human capital will be larger than those by Physical capital, Public capital and the HWI, consistent with gender and health empowerment perspectives [7-12] and b) provision of Public capital compensates for low levels of Human capital (women's level of education) [22,24,25]. …”

Ocho diagnósticos para el desarrollo regional

“…Ingreso: el impacto del nivel de ingreso del hogar sobre la salud del niño es con rmado en números trabajos empíricos (Glewwe, Koch y Nguyen 2004;Christiaensen y Alderman 2004;Attanasio et al 2004). Varios trabajos usan como variables instrumentales los activos o salarios promedios a nivel municipal para el ingreso del hogar.…”

“…Los factores a nivel de la comunidad, tales como la disponibilidad de locales de servicios de salud, agua y alcantarillado y la infraestructura de transporte, afectan el estado de salud de los niños (Attanasio et al 2004;Cortez 2002;Levy et al 1996;Rosenzweig y Schultz 1982).…”