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Socioeconomic gradients in early childhood health: evidence from Bangladesh and Nepal

BACKGROUND: A large literature has developed researching the origins of socioeconomic gradients in child health in developed countries. Particularly, this research examines the age at which these gradient effects emerge and how they change across different stages of childhood. However, similar resea...

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Autores principales: Devkota, Satis, Panda, Bibhudutta
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4867530/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27184747
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-016-0364-2
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author Devkota, Satis
Panda, Bibhudutta
author_facet Devkota, Satis
Panda, Bibhudutta
author_sort Devkota, Satis
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: A large literature has developed researching the origins of socioeconomic gradients in child health in developed countries. Particularly, this research examines the age at which these gradient effects emerge and how they change across different stages of childhood. However, similar research on developing countries is limited. METHODS: This paper examines the socioeconomic gradients in early childhood health in two developing countries, Bangladesh and Nepal using the 2011 Demographic and Health Surveys. The paper separately studies two measures of household socioeconomic status: household wealth and maternal educational attainment. Two anthropometric measures of early childhood health, height-for-age and weight-for-age Z scores for 0–59 months of children, are used for our empirical exercise. The paper uses both non-parametric and multivariate ordinary least squares approaches to examine at what age socioeconomic disparities in health emerge, and investigates if these disparities increase with age in early childhood. RESULTS: The paper provides significant evidence of age-specific socioeconomic gradients in early childhood health in both countries. Health disparities in household wealth exist in both countries. This disparity emerges in the first 11 months of life, and is particularly severe for children from the poorest quintile. On the other hand, while the emergence of maternal education gradients during the first 11 months is sensitive to the choice of childhood health measure, the study finds the children of mothers with higher education to enjoy significantly higher health outcomes in comparison to those with lower education. However, controlling for father’s education weakens the effects of maternal education on child health in both countries. Further, the paper does not find statistically significant evidence where socioeconomic gradients in health increase with age in early childhood. CONCLUSIONS: Our study concludes that socioeconomic disparities in health outcomes exist even in very early childhood in Bangladesh and Nepal. This has important implications for targeted policy interventions in the form of food security and nutrition supplement programs, free provision of health care, and maternal education in both countries. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12939-016-0364-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-48675302016-05-17 Socioeconomic gradients in early childhood health: evidence from Bangladesh and Nepal Devkota, Satis Panda, Bibhudutta Int J Equity Health Research BACKGROUND: A large literature has developed researching the origins of socioeconomic gradients in child health in developed countries. Particularly, this research examines the age at which these gradient effects emerge and how they change across different stages of childhood. However, similar research on developing countries is limited. METHODS: This paper examines the socioeconomic gradients in early childhood health in two developing countries, Bangladesh and Nepal using the 2011 Demographic and Health Surveys. The paper separately studies two measures of household socioeconomic status: household wealth and maternal educational attainment. Two anthropometric measures of early childhood health, height-for-age and weight-for-age Z scores for 0–59 months of children, are used for our empirical exercise. The paper uses both non-parametric and multivariate ordinary least squares approaches to examine at what age socioeconomic disparities in health emerge, and investigates if these disparities increase with age in early childhood. RESULTS: The paper provides significant evidence of age-specific socioeconomic gradients in early childhood health in both countries. Health disparities in household wealth exist in both countries. This disparity emerges in the first 11 months of life, and is particularly severe for children from the poorest quintile. On the other hand, while the emergence of maternal education gradients during the first 11 months is sensitive to the choice of childhood health measure, the study finds the children of mothers with higher education to enjoy significantly higher health outcomes in comparison to those with lower education. However, controlling for father’s education weakens the effects of maternal education on child health in both countries. Further, the paper does not find statistically significant evidence where socioeconomic gradients in health increase with age in early childhood. CONCLUSIONS: Our study concludes that socioeconomic disparities in health outcomes exist even in very early childhood in Bangladesh and Nepal. This has important implications for targeted policy interventions in the form of food security and nutrition supplement programs, free provision of health care, and maternal education in both countries. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12939-016-0364-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2016-05-16 /pmc/articles/PMC4867530/ /pubmed/27184747 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-016-0364-2 Text en © Devkota and Panda. 2016 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver(http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Devkota, Satis
Panda, Bibhudutta
Socioeconomic gradients in early childhood health: evidence from Bangladesh and Nepal
title Socioeconomic gradients in early childhood health: evidence from Bangladesh and Nepal
title_full Socioeconomic gradients in early childhood health: evidence from Bangladesh and Nepal
title_fullStr Socioeconomic gradients in early childhood health: evidence from Bangladesh and Nepal
title_full_unstemmed Socioeconomic gradients in early childhood health: evidence from Bangladesh and Nepal
title_short Socioeconomic gradients in early childhood health: evidence from Bangladesh and Nepal
title_sort socioeconomic gradients in early childhood health: evidence from bangladesh and nepal
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4867530/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27184747
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-016-0364-2
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