Publication: Health Reform, Population Policy and Child Nutritional Status in China
Date
2008-04
ISSN
Published
2008-04
Author(s)
Abstract
This paper examines the determinants of
child nutritional status in seven provinces of China during
the 1990s, focusing specifically on the role of two areas of
public policy, namely health system reforms and the one
child policy. The empirical relationship between income and
nutritional status, and the extent to which that
relationship is mediated by access to quality healthcare and
being an only-child, is investigated using ordinary least
squares, random effects, fixed effects, and instrumental
variables models. In the preferred model - a fixed effects
model where income is instrumented - the author find that
being an only-child increases height-for-age z-scores by
0.119 of a standard deviation. The magnitude of this effect
is found to be largely gender and income neutral. By
contrast, access to quality healthcare and income is not
found to be significantly associated with improved
nutritional status in the preferred model. Data are drawn
from four waves of the China Health and Nutrition Survey.
Citation
“Bredenkamp, Caryn. 2008. Health Reform, Population Policy and Child Nutritional Status in China. Policy Research Working Paper; No. 4587. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/07a3eb38-5982-5bc0-9ca6-bc913e0620ec License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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