The fiscal cost of child grants in the context of high adult mortality in South Africa: A simulation to 2015

This paper investigates the expected costs of cash transfers to children in South Africa up to 2015. The child population is not expected to grow between 2008 and 2015 and thus the fiscal cost of the Child Support Grant is expected to stabilise in the near future. The other major child grant, the Foster Care Grant, is far less predictable – while it is not intended to be an orphan grant, three quarters of its beneficiaries are orphans. Because of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the number of dual orphans is expected to double between 2008 and 2015, reaching 1.3 million, and the overall number of orphans (maternal, paternal and dual) to reach 4.8 million by 2015. If the Foster Care Grant were to become a de facto orphan grant, its costs would escalate rapidly. The paper does not argue in favour of an orphan grant, but rather for greater effort in ensuring that the Child Support Grant reaches the neediest children, especially maternal orphans.     

The performance of the Child Support Grant: Review and research priorities

This article reports the findings of a review on the performance of the Child Support Grant (CSG) programme. It suggests that the CSG impact theory is sound, the programme has in general been implemented well and the limited research on impact is suggestive of it achieving its ultimate objectives of reducing child deprivation and promoting human capital development. It points to the vastness of the child poverty that remains to be addressed and raises the concern that in spite of young children being prioritised in the roll out of the CSG, child poverty incidence may be highest in children aged zero to four. Weaknesses in programme implementation are identified, as well as research priorities in three areas: the child poverty profile, CSG programme implementation and CSG impact.     

Urban mortality in Greece: Hermoupolis (1859–1940)

The paper examines mortality patterns in the city of Hermoupolis, on the Greek island of Syros, from 1859 to 1940. It produces important new insights into Mediterranean urban historical demography and is the first comprehensive study of urban mortality in Greece, utilising the largest and one of the longest time series at the individual level yet calculated from civil registration and census data. Abridged life tables were constructed for the first time for a Greek urban settlement, enabling the calculation of age-specific mortality rates and life expectancies. Hermoupolis experienced much higher mortality levels than the national average. The findings suggest that early childhood mortality started to decline rapidly from the late nineteenth century onwards, with declines in early adulthood and infancy following. The paper reinforces and confirms our limited knowledge about the timing of the mortality transition in Greece. It proposes that an urban penalty was clearly operating in the country even during the early twentieth century. Finally, this paper suggests that a combination of factors was responsible for the mortality decline in Hermoupolis, including wider access to water, which even when it was not clean enough to drink, nevertheless enabled improvements in personal hygiene among the residents of the city.     

Child mortality under Chinese reforms

This paper looks at the impact of China's economic reforms on its health performance. Based on an appropriate health outcomes indicator, the logit of infant survival, it appears that while still out-performing most countries, China's relative advance decreased during the reform period. Consistent with the fact that the health system had to rely increasingly on private expenditures, we find an increasing impact of income on infant survival. We also show that relative prices at the provincial level matter for infant survival: for a given increase in income per capita, a real currency depreciation lowers survival. Focusing on poverty reduction still seems to be a major means to significantly improve infant survival in China.     

Mortality in South Africa: Socio-economic profile and association with self-reported health

This paper exploits the first two waves of the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) to describe the socio-economic profile of mortality and to assess whether self-rated health status is predictive of mortality between waves. Mortality rates in NIDS are in line with estimates from official death notification data and display the expected hump of excess mortality in early and middle adulthood due to AIDS, with the excess peaking earlier for women than for men. We find evidence of a socio-economic gradient in mortality, with higher rates of mortality for individuals from asset-poor households and with lower levels of education. Consistent with evidence from many industrialised countries and a few developing countries, we find self-rated health to be a significant predictor of two-year mortality, an association that remains after controlling for socio-economic status and several other subjective and objective measures of health.     

Deprivation among children living and working on the streets of Harare

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the extent of deprivation and vulnerability among children who live and work on the streets of Harare. A questionnaire survey was administered to 100 children in Harare's central business district; this was supplemented by in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. The study found that these children suffered severe deprivation, in particular in terms of shelter and education. The majority of the children obtained their income from begging and selling small items. They were exposed to verbal, physical, sexual and emotional abuse by the public, as well as by other children and adults on the streets. Poverty was the main reason for the children being on the streets, while social factors such as family disintegration or the death of their parents also played a role. These push factors can be addressed through providing more social protection, cash transfers to families, and education and health assistance.     

Negative economic shocks and child schooling: Evidence from rural Malawi

This study investigates the impacts of negative economic shocks on child schooling in households of rural Malawi, one of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Both individually-reported and community-level shocks are investigated. There is evidence that community-level shocks negatively impact the school enrolment of children. The point estimates suggest that this effect is larger when shocks and school enrolment are reported by men as compared with women. However, we cannot conclude with statistical confidence that the impact of idiosyncratic shocks is larger when reported by males than when reported by females. Similarly, although the point estimates suggest that the impact of community-level shocks on the school enrolment of children is larger than that of idiosyncratic shocks, we cannot conclude with statistical significance that the impacts of community-level and idiosyncratic shocks are different.     

Ethnic-specific infant care practices and infant mortality in late Imperial Russia

The Russian Empire had the highest infant mortality rate in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. Using a variety of official statistical sources and qualitative evidence, this paper documents uniquely high infant mortality among ethnic Russians. In contrast, among other ethnic groups of the empire, infant mortality rates did not exceed those of the European countries by much. The evidence suggests that the explanation for the Russian infant mortality pattern was ethnic-specific infant care practices, such as the early introduction of solid food, which increased the incidence of lethal gastrointestinal diseases. Our findings highlight the importance of traditional infant feeding practices in mortality in pre-industrial societies.     

Status and mortality: Is there a Whitehall effect in the United States?

The influential Whitehall studies found that top-ranking civil servants in Britain experienced lower mortality than civil servants below them in the organizational hierarchy due to differential exposure to workplace stress. I test for a Whitehall effect in the United States using a 1930 cohort of white-collar employees at a leading firm – General Electric (GE). All had access to a corporate health and welfare program during a critical period associated with the health transition. I measure status using position in the managerial hierarchy, attendance at prestigious management training camps and promotions, none of which is associated with a Whitehall-like rank-mortality gradient. Instead, senior managers and executives experienced a 3–5-year decrease in lifespan relative to those in lower levels, with the largest mortality penalty experienced by individuals in the second level of the hierarchy. I discuss generalizability and potential explanations for this reversal of the Whitehall phenomenon using additional data on the status and lifespan of top business executives and US senators.     

煤炭资源型城市经济发展对健康的影响

文章在Grossman健康需求模型以及实践研究的基础上,运用来自中国24个煤炭资源型城市的经济数据和死亡率数据进行实证分析,结果表明经济发展和人口死亡率之间存在着显著关系,并且部分城市死亡率随着经济发展呈现出先增长后下降的倒U趋势.文章还对煤炭资源型城市安徽省淮北市进行个案研究,以实地发放问卷为数据来源,以健康自评为衡量健康指标,考察各因素对居民健康影响,发现性别、教育和职业地位对健康影响显著.     

Social inequalities in famine mortality in the manorial system of the tsarist Russian province of Livland in the mid-1840s

By relying on longitudinal data on two rural parishes in the Russian Baltic province of Livland, the article analyses two questions concerning famine's short-run effects on mortality in a manorial system: (1) whether there is evidence of a social gradient in mortality during the famine of 1844–6 and (2) whether the manors could protect the peasants against the hardships. The analysis reveals that neither the status of a farmer peasant nor the landlord saved the local inhabitants from an increased risk of dying during the famine of 1844–6. The conventional assumptions about the protective effect of the higher socio-economic status or type of manor against subsistence crisis found very little support in the study.     

Chasing Success: Health Sector Aid and Mortality

As many cases studies show, successful public health measures are being implemented in many places around the globe, and country-level mortality has fallen significantly in recent decades in all but a few countries. Are the two linked? Does development assistance for health (DAH) improve, on balance, recipient countries’ mortality trajectory? Using a new data source containing DAH on 96 high mortality countries, the regression analysis shows no effect of DAH on mortality. Other types of aid, including water development, also have no effect. Economic growth, on the other hand, has a strong negative effect on mortality. These findings confirm and build upon recent work by Williamson (2008) and are shown to be robust to a variety of sensitivity analyses and alternative model specifications and estimation methods.This analysis also shows that the effectiveness of DAH has not increased over time, even as the level of that funding has increased fourfold, though spending on infectious diseases and family planning may have caused small reductions in mortality. Furthermore, even though it is encouraging that DAH has tended to go where the need is highest, it also goes to states that have experienced the greatest mortality reductions in the recent past. In other words, DAH appears to be following success, rather than causing it.     

From home to hospital: The evolution of childbirth in the United States, 1928-1940

This paper examines the shift in childbirth from home to hospital that occurred in the United States in the early 20th century. Using a panel of city-level data over the period 1928-1940, we examine the impact on maternal mortality resulting from the shift of childbirth from home to hospital. Results suggest that until the late 1930s when sulfa drugs were developed, medical intervention had a limited impact on maternal mortality. Post-sulfa, the medicalization of childbirth reduced maternal mortality. Regressions estimated separately by race provide mixed evidence as to whether blacks and whites benefited differentially from medical intervention.