Inequality and Poverty in Africa in an Era of Globalization: Looking Beyond Income to Health and Education

Abstract

This paper describes changes over the past 15-20 years in non-income measures of wellbeing-education and health-in Africa. We expected to find, as we did in Latin America, that progress in the provision of public services and the focus of public spending in the social sector would contribute to declining poverty and inequality in health and education, even in an environment of stagnant or worsening levels of income poverty. Unfortunately, our results indicate that in the area of health, little progress is being made in terms of reducing pre-school age stunting, a clear manifestation of poor overall health. Likewise, our health inequality measure showed that while there were a few instances of reduced inequality along this dimension, there was, on balance, little evidence of success in improving equality of outcomes. Similar results were found in our examination of underweight women as an indicator of general current health status of adults. With regard to education, the story is somewhat more positive. However, the overall picture gives little cause for complacency or optimism that Africa has reaped, or will soon reap the potential benefits of the process of globalization.

Decomposition Analysis of Health Inequality among Rural Households in Nigeria

“…This is caused by the common misconception in the literature that income inequality is closely related to other forms of inequality and can thus be used as a proxy for the level and changes in overall inequality in any given society. But it has been recognized (Sahn and Younger 2007;Haddad et al 2003;Appleton and Song 1999) that there is a low correlation between income and many other measures of living standards, particularly health. Health status is correlated with income, both for individuals within nations, and across nations in aggregate and there is a widespread evidence that health system performance in low and middle income countries is inequitable but the correlation is far from perfect so that looking at health leads to different assessments of well-being than come from looking only at income.…”

Introduction: Globalization–Poverty Channels and Case Studies from Sub‐Saharan Africa

“…Sahn and Younger (2007) explore how globalization affected non-income measures of well-being -health and education -in Africa over the past 15-20 years. They expected to find, as they had previously in Latin America, that progress in the provision of public services and the focus of public spending in the social sector would contribute to declining poverty and inequality in health and education, even in an environment of stagnant or worsening income poverty.…”