Health infrastructure and child health in rural Peru

Type Working Paper
Title Health infrastructure and child health in rural Peru
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2004
URL http://198.62.77.13/res/laresnetwork/files/pr211finaldraft.pdf
Abstract
This paper reports empirical evidence on the effect of the expansion of health infrastructure upon child nutrition in rural Peru. Using a pooled sample from the 1996 and 2000 rounds of the Peruvian DHS survey, I am able to control for biases in the allocation of public investments by using a district fixed effects model. The econometric analysis finds a positive albeit small effect of the expansion of the last decade. More importantly, the effect is found to be larger for children of less educated mothers and of households that has spanish as their main language at home. In this sense, we can say that this policy may have a pro-poor bias while at the same time excluding a tradtionally marginalized population group. These findings are consisten with the idea that we need more explicitly inclusive policies to improve the health of indigenous groups living in remote rural areas so that we can take them out of this kind of poverty trap

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