Abstract
In this article we present a new composite index of child health, applied to the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of Africa, one of the areas of the planet most castigated by poverty. Our index has been constructed attending to the variables defined in the Goals of the Millennium Declaration. For this purpose we will use the P2 distance method for the year 2008, the last year for which data are available. This index integrates variables of child health that permit a territorial ordering of the LDCs of Africa, in terms of those partial indicators.
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Notes
The criteria on which the Development Policy Committee (DPC) based its revision in 2006 of the list of the Less Developed Countries were as follows: (a) A “ low income”, measured by the gross national income (GNI) per capita (average of three years, 2002–2004), with thresholds of 750 dollars for the inclusion of countries in the list and of 900 dollars for their exclusion; (b) The “stocks of human assets”, measured by a composite index (the human assets index) based on indicators of: (i) nutrition (percentage of the population under-nourished); (ii) health (infant mortality rate); (iii) schooling (gross rate of secondary schooling); and (iv) literacy (adult literacy rate); and (c) “Economic vulnerability”, measured by a composite index (index of economic vulnerability) based on indicators of: (i) natural shocks (index of instability of agricultural production; percentage of the population displaced by natural disasters); (ii) commercial shocks (index of instability of exports of goods and services); (iii) vulnerability to shocks (part of GDP corresponding to agriculture, forestry and fishing; index of concentration of exports of goods); (iv) small size of the economy (population expressed in logarithms); and (v) remoteness.
This has occurred in the variables: Average life expectancy at birth; Proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel and the Percentage of children under 5 fever being treated with anti-malarial drug, whose available information is from 2007, while for the Percentage of children under 5 severely underweight we use that existing in 2006.
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Rodríguez Martín, J.A. An Index of Child Health in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of Africa. Soc Indic Res 105, 309–322 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-010-9778-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-010-9778-1