IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/7023.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The reduction of child mortality in the Middle East and North Africa : a success story

Author

Listed:
  • Iqbal, Farrukh
  • Kiendrebeogo, Youssouf

Abstract

Although child mortality rates have declined all across the developing world over the past 40 years, they have declined the most in the Middle East and North Africa region. This paper documents this remarkable experience and shows that it is broad based in the sense that all countries in the Middle East and North Africa experienced significant declines in child mortality over this period and each country did better than most of its comparators. In looking for the sources of the region’s performance edge, the paper confirms the importance of such determinants of child mortality as income growth, education stock, public spending on health, urbanization, and food sufficiency. In addition, the paper establishes that the initial level of mortality has a substantial influence on the pace of subsequent child mortality decline. Of these factors, food sufficiency status is found to contribute to the region’s performance edge over all developing regions, while the other factors are found to matter to varying degrees in selected pairwise regional comparisons.

Suggested Citation

  • Iqbal, Farrukh & Kiendrebeogo, Youssouf, 2014. "The reduction of child mortality in the Middle East and North Africa : a success story," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7023, The World Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7023
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2014/09/04/000158349_20140904134808/Rendered/PDF/WPS7023.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sanjeev Gupta & Marijn Verhoeven & Erwin R. Tiongson, 2003. "Public spending on health care and the poor," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(8), pages 685-696, August.
    2. Barro, Robert J. & Lee, Jong Wha, 2013. "A new data set of educational attainment in the world, 1950–2010," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 184-198.
    3. Filmer, Deon & Pritchett, Lant, 1999. "The impact of public spending on health: does money matter?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 49(10), pages 1309-1323, November.
    4. Clemens, Michael A. & Kenny, Charles J. & Moss, Todd J., 2007. "The Trouble with the MDGs: Confronting Expectations of Aid and Development Success," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 735-751, May.
    5. Lucia Hanmer & Robert Lensink & Howard White, 2003. "Infant and child mortality in developing countries: Analysing the data for Robust determinants," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(1), pages 101-118.
    6. Farrukh Iqbal, 2006. "Sustaining Gains in Poverty Reduction and Human Development in the Middle East and North Africa," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 7048.
    7. McGuire, James W., 2006. "Basic health care provision and under-5 mortality: A Cross-National study of developing Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 405-425, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kamal Kasmaoui, 2020. "What makes Moroccans happy: A micro-data study," Working Papers hal-02956855, HAL.
    2. Efstratia Arampatzi & Martijn Burger & Elena Ianchovichina & Tina Röhricht & Ruut Veenhoven, 2018. "Unhappy Development: Dissatisfaction With Life on the Eve of the Arab Spring," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(s1), pages 80-113, October.
    3. Elena Ianchovichina & Lili Mottaghi & Shantayanan Devarajan, "undated". "Middle East and North Africa Economic Monitor, October 2015," World Bank Publications - Reports 22711, The World Bank Group.
    4. Shantayanan Devarajan, 2018. "How to Use Oil Revenues Efficiently," Working Papers 1199, Economic Research Forum, revised 24 May 2018.
    5. Taleb Awad-Warrad & Buthaina M. A. Muhtaseb, 2017. "Trade Openness and Inclusive Economic Growth: Poverty Reduction through the Growth Unemployment Linkage," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 7(2), pages 348-354.

    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. Deepak Kumar Behera & Umakant Dash, 2020. "Is health expenditure effective for achieving healthcare goals? Empirical evidence from South-East Asia Region," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 593-618, June.
    2. Micheal Kofi Boachie & K. Ramu & Tatjana Põlajeva, 2018. "Public Health Expenditures and Health Outcomes: New Evidence from Ghana," Economies, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-25, October.
    3. Lay, Jann, 2010. "MDG Achievements, Determinants, and Resource Needs: What Has Been Learnt?," GIGA Working Papers 137, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    4. Clemens, Michael A. & Kenny, Charles J. & Moss, Todd J., 2007. "The Trouble with the MDGs: Confronting Expectations of Aid and Development Success," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 735-751, May.
    5. Weichun Chen & Judith A. Clarke & Nilanjana Roy, 2014. "Health and wealth: Short panel Granger causality tests for developing countries," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(6), pages 755-784, September.
    6. Stephan Klasen & Simon Lange, 2011. "Getting Progress Right: Measuring Progress Towards the MDGs Against Historical Trends," Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers 87, Courant Research Centre PEG, revised 20 Feb 2012.
    7. Bienvenido Ortega & Jesús Sanjuán & Antonio Casquero, 2017. "Determinants of efficiency in reducing child mortality in developing countries. The role of inequality and government effectiveness," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 500-516, December.
    8. Kruse, Ioana & Pradhan, Menno & Sparrow, Robert, 2012. "Marginal benefit incidence of public health spending: Evidence from Indonesian sub-national data," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 147-157.
    9. Iqbal Farrukh & Kiendrebeogo Youssouf, 2015. "Public Spending and Education Attainment in the Middle East and North Africa," Review of Middle East Economics and Finance, De Gruyter, vol. 11(2), pages 99-118, August.
    10. Olper, Alessandro & Curzi, Daniele & Swinnen, Johan, 2018. "Trade liberalization and child mortality: A Synthetic Control Method," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 394-410.
    11. Youssouf Kiendrebeogo & Farrukh Iqbal, 2022. "Resource curse for human development?," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 1173-1206, May.
    12. Lisa Chauvet & Flore Gubert & Sandrine Mesplé-Somps, 2009. "Are Remittances More Effective Than Aid To Reduce Child Mortality ? An Empirical Assessment using Inter and Intra-Country Data," Working Papers halshs-00966367, HAL.
    13. Maria Lo Bue & Stephan Klasen, 2013. "Identifying Synergies and Complementarities Between MDGs: Results from Cluster Analysis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 113(2), pages 647-670, September.
    14. Gebregziabher, Fiseha & Niño-Zarazúa, Miguel, 2014. "Social spending and aggregate welfare in developing and transition economies," WIDER Working Paper Series 082, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    15. Wang, Shaobin & Wu, Jun, 2020. "Spatial heterogeneity of the associations of economic and health care factors with infant mortality in China using geographically weighted regression and spatial clustering," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 263(C).
    16. Díaz Serrano, Lluís & Sackey, Frank G., 2016. "Do political regime transitions in Africa Matter for Citizens’ Health Status," Working Papers 2072/267086, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    17. Mansour Farahani & S. V. Subramanian & David Canning, 2010. "Effects of state‐level public spending on health on the mortality probability in India," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(11), pages 1361-1376, November.
    18. Kosack, Stephen & Tobin, Jennifer L., 2015. "Which Countries’ Citizens Are Better Off With Trade?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 95-113.
    19. Welander, Anna & Lyttkens, Carl Hampus & Nilsson, Therese, 2014. "Globalization and Child Health in Developing Countries: The Role of Democracy," Working Papers 2014:11, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    20. Eric Arthur & Hassan E. Oaikhenan, 2017. "The Effects of Health Expenditure on Health Outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 29(3), pages 524-536, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Population Policies; Regional Economic Development; Early Child and Children's Health; Health Monitoring&Evaluation; Adolescent Health;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:wbk:wbrwps:7023. 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    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.