IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v60y2005i1p165-178.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does economic inequality affect child malnutrition? The case of Ecuador

Author

Listed:
  • Larrea, Carlos
  • Kawachi, Ichiro

Abstract

Economic inequality has been hypothesized to be a determinant of population health, independent of poverty and household income. We examined the association between economic inequality and child malnutrition in Ecuador. Economic inequality was measured by the Gini coefficient of household per capita consumption, estimated from the 1990 Census. Childhood stunting, assessed from height-for-age z scores, was obtained from the 1998 Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS). We controlled for a range of individual and household covariates, including per capita food consumption, education, housing, ethnicity, fertility, access to health services, diarrhea morbidity, child care, mother's age and diet composition. Stunting still affects 26% of children under five in Ecuador, with higher prevalence in the rural Highlands and among indigenous peoples. Maternal education, basic housing conditions, access to health services, ethnicity, fertility, maternal age and diet composition were independently associated with stunting. However, after controlling for relevant covariates, economic inequality at the provincial scale had a statistically significant deleterious effect on stunting. At municipal or local levels, inequality was not associated with stunting.

Suggested Citation

  • Larrea, Carlos & Kawachi, Ichiro, 2005. "Does economic inequality affect child malnutrition? The case of Ecuador," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 165-178, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:60:y:2005:i:1:p:165-178
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(04)00205-9
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blakely, Tony A. & Lochner, Kimberly & Kawachi, Ichiro, 2002. "Metropolitan area income inequality and self-rated health--a multi-level study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 65-77, January.
    2. Diez-Roux, Ana V. & Link, Bruce G. & Northridge, Mary E., 2000. "A multilevel analysis of income inequality and cardiovascular disease risk factors," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 673-687, March.
    3. Ukwuani, Festus A. & Suchindran, Chirayath M., 2003. "Implications of women's work for child nutritional status in sub-Saharan Africa: a case study of Nigeria," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 56(10), pages 2109-2121, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chang, Virginia W. & Christakis, Nicholas A., 2005. "Income inequality and weight status in US metropolitan areas," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 83-96, July.
    2. Barnett, Ross & Pearce, Jamie & Moon, Graham, 2005. "Does social inequality matter? Changing ethnic socio-economic disparities and Maori smoking in New Zealand, 1981-1996," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(7), pages 1515-1526, April.
    3. Lhila, Aparna, 2009. "Does government provision of healthcare explain the relationship between income inequality and low birthweight?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(8), pages 1236-1245, October.
    4. Wilkinson, Richard G & Pickett, Kate E., 2006. "Income inequality and population health: A review and explanation of the evidence," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(7), pages 1768-1784, April.
    5. Elnaz Hajebi & Mohammad Javad Razmi, 2014. "Effect Of Income Inequality On Health Status In A Selection Of Middle And Low Income Countries," Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 9(4), pages 133-152, December.
    6. Wong, Irene O.L. & Cowling, Benjamin J. & Lo, Su-Vui & Leung, Gabriel M., 2009. "A multilevel analysis of the effects of neighbourhood income inequality on individual self-rated health in Hong Kong," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 124-132, January.
    7. Jonathan K Burns & Andrew Tomita & Amy S Kapadia, 2014. "Income inequality and schizophrenia: Increased schizophrenia incidence in countries with high levels of income inequality," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 60(2), pages 185-196, March.
    8. Subramanian, S.V. & Acevedo-Garcia, Dolores & Osypuk, Theresa L., 2005. "Racial residential segregation and geographic heterogeneity in black/white disparity in poor self-rated health in the US: a multilevel statistical analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(8), pages 1667-1679, April.
    9. Masood Gheasi & Noriko Ishikawa & Karima Kourtit & Peter Nijkamp, 2019. "A meta-analysis of human health differences in urban and rural environments," Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 167-186, December.
    10. Sirven, Nicolas, 2006. "Endogenous social capital and self-rated health: Cross-sectional data from rural areas of Madagascar," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(6), pages 1489-1502, September.
    11. Pakrashi, Debayan & Saha, Sarani, 2020. "Intergenerational consequences of maternal domestic violence: Effect on nutritional status of children," GLO Discussion Paper Series 551, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    12. Godoy, Ricardo A. & Reyes-García, Victoria & McDade, Thomas & Huanca, Tomás & Leonard, William R. & Tanner, Susan & Vadez, Vincent, 2006. "Does village inequality in modern income harm the psyche? Anger, fear, sadness, and alcohol consumption in a pre-industrial society," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 359-372, July.
    13. Fatiha Bennia & Nicolas Gravel, 2016. "Is the Distribution of Cardiovascular Risks Really Improving ? A Robust Analysis for France," Working Papers halshs-01321838, HAL.
    14. Laurie F. DeRose, 2007. "Women’s Work and Breastfeeding Simultaneously Rise in Ghana," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55, pages 583-612.
    15. Phillips Edomwonyi Obasohan & Stephen J. Walters & Richard Jacques & Khaled Khatab, 2020. "Risk Factors Associated with Malnutrition among Children Under-Five Years in Sub-Saharan African Countries: A Scoping Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(23), pages 1-23, November.
    16. Sirven, Nicolas & Debrand, Thierry, 2008. "Social participation and healthy ageing: An international comparison using SHARE data," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(12), pages 2017-2026, December.
    17. Chen, Chun-Chih & Chen, Chin-Shyan & Liu, Tsai-Ching & Lin, Ying-Tzu, 2012. "Stock or stroke? Stock market movement and stroke incidence in Taiwan," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(11), pages 1974-1980.
    18. Zewdie, Tadiwos & Abebaw, Degnet, 2013. "Determinants of Child Malnutrition: Empirical Evidence from Kombolcha District of Eastern Hararghe Zone, Ethiopia," Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture, Humboldt-Universitaat zu Berlin, vol. 52(4), pages 1-16, November.
    19. Masako Horino & Sze Yan Liu & Eun-Young Lee & Ichiro Kawachi & Roman Pabayo, 2020. "State-level income inequality and the odds for meeting fruit and vegetable recommendations among US adults," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(9), pages 1-15, September.
    20. Rieger, Matthias & Wagner, Natascha, 2015. "Child health, its dynamic interaction with nutrition and health memory – Evidence from Senegal," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 16(C), pages 135-145.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:60:y:2005:i:1:p:165-178. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.