This report seeks to identify changes in human development outcomes in a period of deepening decentralization and to suggest how the country's decentralized governance structure will be improved to ...increase access to, as well as the quality of, relevant services. The report states decentralized governance structure helped facilitate improvements in service delivery and human development outcomes. The report argues that while policymakers, providers, and citizens must work together to strengthen accountability mechanisms, there is a particular need to strengthen local government and enhance the role of service. The report focuses on key actors and their roles in accelerating progress toward achieving the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) in Ethiopia. The report provides feedback from users of public services on access to, quality of, and adequacy of services. Improvements in health and education outcomes in the past 15 years occurred at a time of massive decentralization in Ethiopia.
Discusses the connection between nutrition and health, focusing on the number of the world's children affected by protein-energy malnutrition as well as other problems of public health significance ...that are caused by insufficient food consumption. Also discusses future trends and policy implications
In 1990 a total of 780 million people out of 4 billion in the developing world are living on diets that are not sufficient to maintain a healthy life, according to the Food and Agriculture ...Organization of the United Nations (FAO). This implies food insecurity for every fifth person in the developing world. Insufficient food consumption is one of the primary causes of malnutrition; the other is infection and poor health. Unless explicit policies to reduce the numbers of underweight are put in place, the total number of children with protein energy malnutrition will rise, and child deaths associated with malnutrition problems will continue unabated. Increase in incomes and reduction in poverty are important, but experiences in several countries indicate that even where there is no rapid improvement in incomes, malnutrition can be reduced by explicit programs and policies that aim at improving household access to food and health services and improving child care practices such as breastfeeding and proper weaning of infants. A concerted effort to follow the examples of successful countries is needed to reduce the numbers of malnourished children in the future.
The determinants of the nutrition and health status of preschool children in developing countries were examined by analyzing data from household surveys carried out in 3 rural provinces of the ...Philippines during the period 1983-1984. The simultaneity issue was addressed by estimating reduced-form relationships. Two estimating models were used to take full advantage of the longitudinal data. The results reinforce and extend the findings of previous research in this area. The child's age, gender, and birth order were each found to be significant explanatory factors in certain of the nutrition and health relationships. Parental education has a positive impact on the long-run health status of preschoolers. The impact of rice prices was negative on height for age but positive on weight for height. Such positive effects are not uncommon in the literature and are the result of strong substitution effects among foods.
We analyse the effect of child care costs on households' behaviour in Kenya. For households with children 3--7 years of age, we model the participation of the mother in paid work, the participation ...of other household members in paid work, household demand for schooling for school-aged children and household demand for child care. We find that high costs of child care discourage households from using formal child care and reduce the level of mothers' participation in market work. The cost of child care and a mother's wage level influence school enrolment of older children. However, these two factors affect boys' and girls' schooling in different ways. An increase in the mother's wage increases school enrolment for boys, but decreases it for girls. Higher prices for child care have no significant effect on boys' schooling but significantly decrease girls' schooling. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.
This book seeks to achieve a balance, describing challenges that are being faced as well as developments that are underway. It seeks a balance in terms of the voices heard, including not just voices ...of the North commenting on the South, but voices from the South, and in concert with the North. It seeks to provide the voices of specialists and generalists, of those from international and local organizations, from academia and the field. It seeks a diversity of views and values. Such diversity and complexity are the reality of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) today. The major focus of this book is on SSA from the Sahel south. Approximately 130 million children between birth and age 6 live in SSA. Every year 27 million children are born, and every year 4.7 million children under age 5 die. Rates of birth and of child deaths are consistently higher in SSA than in any other part of the world; the under-5 mortality rate of 163 per 1,000 is twice that of the rest of the developing world and 30 times that of industrialized countries (UNICEF 2006). Of the children who are born, 65 percent will experience poverty, 14 million will be orphans affected by HIV/AIDS directly and within their families and one-third will experience exclusion because of their gender or ethnicity.
