Publication: Urban Health Advantages and Penalties in India: Overview and Case Studies
Loading...
Published
2016-02-24
ISSN
Date
2016-04-07
Editor(s)
Abstract
It is increasingly recognized that India is urbanizing rapidly, that urbanization is accompanying and contributing to economic growth, but that living conditions in urban areas are often not adequate, particularly for the poor. Health, nutrition, and population conditions are an important part of the urbanization equation. This paper explores the extent to which health, nutrition, and population conditions may be contributing to the benefits of urbanization, as well as the extent to which they may reflect its costs. This is an exploratory study that reviews available information on health, nutrition, and population conditions in urban India. Recognizing that national generalizations and statistics may mask considerable diversity in how the opportunities and challenges of urbanization and health are met in different cities across the country, this paper also draws on specifics of four case studies: Chennai in Tamil Nadu, Bhubaneswar in Odisha, Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, and Shillong in Meghalaya. The summary section provides an overview of this exploratory analysis, discussing the patterns and issues that emerge, along with policy implications in section one. This introductory section two briefly discusses how urbanization and health may be conceptualized, and describes the methodology of this paper. Section three describes governance and organization of urban health systems. Sections four and five review data on the demographic and epidemiological situation in urban India, as well as service utilization. Section six analyzes disparities in health outcomes and access to services, and section seven focuses on water supply and sanitation in urban areas.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Mullen, Patrick; Nair, Divya; Nigam, Jayati; Seth, Katyayni. 2016. Urban Health Advantages and Penalties in India: Overview and Case Studies. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24025 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Background Study for the National Strategy on Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction, 2015-2020(World Bank, Bucharest, 2015-10-15)The background study for the national strategy on social inclusion and poverty reduction 2015-2020 was produced under a RAS agreement with the Ministry of Labor, Family, Social Protection, and Elderly of Romania. The report is a companion volume of the strategy, adopted by the Romanian Government in May 2015, and summarizes the diagnostics and analyses carried out by the World Bank team to provide a sound empirical base for the strategy. Given the multi-dimensional nature of poverty, the report includes diagnostics and policy recommendations on employment, social protection, education, health, housing, social participation, as well as regional and rural development policies. The document is based on a combination of desk research, qualitative data analysis, new data collected by the World Bank team and analyses of administrative, census, and survey data. This included qualitative research (for example, case-studies in two counties, interviews with representatives of central governmental bodies, interviews with recipients and eligible potential beneficiaries of means-tested benefits and with social workers), and quantitative data collection and analysis (a census on social housing stock; census of frontline social workers; a consolidated database of physicians, representatives of the pharmacies, community nurses, and health mediators; administrative dataset with social services for elderly, social services for people with disabilities and specialized child protection services; analysis of poverty. The book is organized in four parts. The first part starts with an analysis of the trends in poverty and social exclusion over the past few years and with a poverty forecast for the next five years (2015 to 2020). The second part analyzes the sectoral policies that must be implemented to tackle the problems identified in the first part of the volume. The third part turns its focus to area-based policies and discusses regional disparities, urban-rural differences, and specific problems in small towns and villages, rural, and urban marginalized areas, and Roma and non-Roma communities. The fourth part discusses the actions needed to strengthen the capacity of the public system to reduce poverty and increase social inclusion.Publication Improving Access to Health Care Services through the Expansion of Coverage Program : The Case of Guatemala(World Bank, Washington DC, 2013-01)Since the signing of the 1996 Peace Accords, Guatemala has made efforts to establish economic and political stability, and to improve its social indicators. The country's Constitution states that access to health care is a basic right of all Guatemalans. In practice, however, it has been challenging for the Government of Guatemala to guarantee this right using public facilities. As a result, it has been trying to improve access to health services using both Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance (MOH) facilities and staff, and alternative health service providers, particularly nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). This case study reviews the experience implementing the Expansion of Coverage Program (Programa de Extension de Cobertura, PEC) that was established by the Government of Guatemala in 1997 to improve coverage of health and nutrition services to poor, rural, and largely indigenous areas by contracting NGOs. It describes its origins; its package of services; contracting, financing, monitoring, and supervision mechanisms; and its contributions to improving access and strengthening primary health care services in Guatemala. It also discusses opportunities and challenges that need to be addressed to continue to improve health services coverage in the country.Publication A Roadmap to Achieve Social Justice in Health Care in Egypt(Washington, DC, 2015)This paper lays out a roadmap to achieve social justice in healthcare by prioritizing areas related to service delivery, financial protection, and quality of care. The aim is to assist the Government of Egypt (GoE) in realizing the principle of social justice in the provision of healthcare. In doing so, the roadmap aims to prioritize key areas of focus for Egypt, including describing which existing programs to continue supporting and which new programs to consider for development, all under an integrated and interdependent structure. It is a focused assessment of how the overarching aim of social justice can be achieved in the healthcare sector through an emphasis on improving services for the most disadvantaged groups. This roadmap suggests recommendations that will result in incremental improvements in Egypt’s healthcare system in the short to medium term with a focus on disadvantaged groups. Achievement of these results should situate Egypt on the path to achieving social justice in healthcare in the long term.Publication Republic of Yemen : Health Sector Strategy Note(Washington, DC, 2001-02)This report is intended to provide a base for discussions of Yemen's health sector strategy with the Government of Yemen (GOY) and other donors in light of the Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) initiative of Health Sector Reform (HSR) as well as the potential areas of World Bank support. The report is divided in nine sections. Section A provides the introduction to the report and the country context. Sections B and C review the key health indicators and trends and the key aspects of the sector in terms of financing, service delivery, human resources, health services, organizational framework, and policy environment. Sections D and E provide international comparisons and an assessment of the sector performance with regard to health outcomes, equity, access, efficiency, quality, and sustainability. Section F is an outline of the MOPH/HSR program. Sections G and H provide an overview of the Bank's current assistance and its response to HSR as well as the different donors' support. Finally, Section I outlines the future areas where the Bank can support the government in its health reform efforts. Yemen faces major challenges to improving the health status of its population, which go beyond the health delivery network. Poverty, low participation in education especially among girls, and high illiteracy are major contributing factors to poor health as are limited access to potable water and proper sanitation.Publication Bangladesh Health Sector Profile 2010(Washington, DC, 2010-01)This health sector profile is a description of the health sector in Bangladesh, including its structure, resources, services, performance and dynamics. This document provides an overview of the sector, based on publicly available reports and data. The document intends to help the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) and its partners to agree on the way forward and its respective roles in the process. It is neither an evaluation nor a programme review, rather it draws and extracts from these key documents to describe how the system works. Chapters one and two provide an overview on the health status of the people of Bangladesh and the determinants of health. Chapters three to eight summarise relevant aspects of the six health systems building blocks: the overall organisation of the health sector including governance and leadership; health services; human resources; information; financing; and medicines. Chapter nine summarises system reform aspects in the Health, Nutrition and Population Sector Programme (HNPSP) and work leading to the new draft national health policy. The annex provides a list of people consulted. The focus of the health sector profile is to describe how the sector works rather than how it should, or what has not happened in the past. The document offers no recommendations of its own in an attempt to leave open space for dialogue. To best serve this purpose, the profile describes all building blocks rather than only those areas where data and information are available. The expectation is that the profile will be updated periodically to fill existing gaps and reflect changes in the sector over time.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Impact of Migration on Economic and Social Development : A Review of Evidence and Emerging Issues(2011-02-01)This paper provides a review of the literature on the development impact of migration and remittances on origin countries and on destination countries in the South. International migration is an ever-growing phenomenon that has important development implications for both sending and receiving countries. For a sending country, migration and the resulting remittances lead to increased incomes and poverty reduction, and improved health and educational outcomes, and promote economic development. Yet these gains might come at substantial social costs to the migrants and their families. Since many developing countries are also large recipients of international migrants, they face challenges of integration of immigrants, job competition between migrant and native workers, and fiscal costs associated with provision of social services to the migrants. This paper also summarizes incipient discussions on the impacts of migration on climate change, democratic values, demographics, national identity, and security. In conclusion, the paper highlights a few policy recommendations calling for better integration of migration in development policies in the South and the North, improving data collection on migration and remittance flows, leveraging remittances for improving access to finance of recipient households and countries, improving recruitment mechanisms, and facilitating international labor mobility through safe and legal channels.Publication The Role of Social Ties in Factor Allocation(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-10)We investigate whether social structure helps or hinders factor allocation using unusually rich data from the Gambia. Evidence indicates that land available for cultivation is allocated unequally across households; and that factor transfers are more common between neighbors, co-ethnics, and kinship-related households. Does this lead to the conclusion that land inequality is due to flows of land between households being impeded by social divisions? To answer this question, a novel methodology that approaches exhaustive data on dyadic flows from an aggregate point of view is introduced. Land transfers lead to a more equal distribution of land and to more comparable factor ratios across households in general. But equalizing transfers of land are not more likely within ethnic or kinship groups. In conclusion, ethnic and kinship divisions do not hinder land and labor transfers in a way that contributes to aggregate factor inequality. Labor transfers do not equilibrate factor ratios across households. But it cannot be ruled out that they serve a beneficial role, for example, to deal with unanticipated health shocks.Publication The Firm-Level Impact of the Covid–19 Pandemic(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-09-02)The World Bank commissioned a firm-level survey to provide quantitative evidence of the impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Two rounds of data have now been collected for the months of March and May using a nationally representative World Bank survey providing information on the impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The survey includes five hundred firms spanning a wide range of industries and firm sizes, as well as the formal and informal sector. This note provides a snapshot of how the firms’ outcomes and response to the pandemic have changed between the months of March and May 2020.Publication MIGA Annual Report 2013 : Insuring Investments, Ensuring Opportunities(Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2013-10-11)In fiscal year 2013, Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) issued 2.8 billion dollars in investment guarantees for projects in our developing member countries. At 1.5 billion dollars, representing more than half of new business, the bulk of MIGA's guarantees issued support investments in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sixty-nine percent of new business volume this year was in complex projects in infrastructure and extractive industries, a strategic priority for the Agency. This year, 82 percent of MIGA's new volume fell into one or more of strategic priority areas: investments in the world's poorest countries, "South-South" investments, investments in conflict-affected countries, and investments in complex projects. MIGA also established the conflict-affected and fragile economies facility to further deepen support to this priority area.