The past half-century has seen enormous changes in the demographic makeup of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). In the 1950s, LAC had a small population of about 160 million people, less than today's population of Brazil. Two-thirds of Latin Americans lived in rural areas. F…
This publication, which is based on the unique methodology and tools developed for the World Bank Institute/Harvard School of Public Health Flagship Course on Health System Reform and Sustainable Financing, provides a powerful set of resources to help policy makers better naviga…
India has the greatest maternal and child health burden in the world, having more stunted and wasted children, neonatal deaths, and deaths of children under age five than any other nation (Paul et al. 2011; UNICEF 2013; 2018; Hug, Sharrow, and You 2017). Progress has been made i…
The impact of environmental degradation on well-being is largely ignored in terms of economic costs of development. Due in large part to measurement difficulties, the environment in the daily welfare of the world's poorest remains inadequately accounted for in development polici…
This thesis examines the impact of social policies on child mortality. It argues that structural factors explain most of the variation in child mortality across countries and time. But that in Vietnam the state implemented effective social policies; leading to this country havin…
In this dissertation, I seek to better understand health as the intersection of individual characteristics with broader historical and societal contexts by examining societal levels shocks as social determinants of health. In particular, I seek to understand pathways through whi…
Substantial progress has been made toward investigating the circumstances of child deaths, yet little is known about child deaths in U.S. immigrant families (Shanley, Risch, & Bonner, 2010; Millet, 2016). Statistics indicate that one in five children younger than the age of 18 i…
Background GDP per capita is arguably the single most predictive determinant of health at the national level, yet such a measure fails to capture the complexity of wealth (and thus health) distribution within a population. Health at the individual level has been shown to be asso…
Female education is believed to affect health through its influence on health behaviors. However, the effect of female education may be estimated incorrectly when female education is correlated with unobserved variables at the community and individual levels that also influence …
This historical study explored the impact of Nigeria's health programs on child mortality between 1980 and 1995. Using data from previous studies, the relationships between the dependent variable and the independent variables were analyzed by means of multiple regressions statis…
Rates of child mortality vary greatly across the globe. The lowest rates are found in developed countries, with the lowest located in Iceland at 3 deaths per 1,000 live births. The highest rates exist in less-developed countries, the highest of which located in Niger at 305 deat…
The study examined the causes of high male/female child ratio in South Asia. Three theoretical perspectives are considered: modernization theory, dependency theory, and dual systems theory. Macro data from four South Asia countries—Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka—betw…
The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the causes of the differential treatment of sick boys and girls in Minia, Egypt. I give attention to the social, economic, and cultural factors that define the position of women in this setting and that explain the distribution of d…
The number of displaced persons has increased dramatically over the past few decades and is expected to continue to rise. By the end of 1999 there were believed to be between 32 and 38 million displaced persons worldwide (UN 2000, USCR 2000). Most of these people have been or wi…
Since the early 1980s, child health policies promoted by the international health community and national governments in the developing world have focused on a selective disease control approach which targets the leading causes of infant and child mortality through low cost medic…
The digital revolution has added a new way of humankind's communication methods by creating significant changes in social life. This new communication platform that changes the world and also rapidly keeps up with the changing world is called as "Social Media". This platform, wh…