Child Nutrition, Economic Growth, and the Provision of Health Care Services in Vietnam in the 1990s
Vietnam's rapid economic growth in the 1990s greatly increased the incomes of Vietnamese households, which led to a dramatic decline in poverty. Over the same period, child malnutrition rates in Vietnam, as measured by low height for age in ch...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2013
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2002/02/1703254/child-nutrition-economic-growth-provision-health-care-services-vietnam-1990s http://hdl.handle.net/10986/15737 |
| Summary: | Vietnam's rapid economic growth in
the 1990s greatly increased the incomes of Vietnamese
households, which led to a dramatic decline in poverty. Over
the same period, child malnutrition rates in Vietnam, as
measured by low height for age in children under 5, fell
from 50 percent in 1992-93 to 34 percent in 1997-98.
Disparities exist, however, between different regions, urban
and rural areas, ethnicities, and income quintiles. This
dramatic improvement in child nutrition during a time of
high economic growth suggests that the nutritional
improvements are due to higher household incomes. The
authors investigate whether this causal hypothesis is true
by estimating the impact of household income growth on
children's nutritional status in Vietnam. Different
estimation methods applied to the 1992-93 and 1997-98
Vietnam Living Standards Survey data find that growth in
household expenditures accounts for only a small proportion
of the improvements in children's nutritional status.
The authors use data on local health facilities to
investigate the role that they may have played in raising
children's nutritional status in Vietnam. |
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