Title:	Health Inequality and Development
Authors:	Mark McGillivray, Indranil Dutta and David Lawson
Keywords:	Health Inequality
Issue Date:	2011
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Description:	Throughout most of the last century there has been steady improvement in health outcomes. Among them are improvements in life expectancy, which has increased significantly across countries. On average people now live longer and healthier than even 50 years ago. Life expectancy improved globally from a lowly 48 years in 1955 to 68 years by 2005, and for a number of countries it currently exceeds 80 years (WHO 1996; UNDP 2007). This substantial increase in longevity has been coupled by a dramatic control of infectious diseases that has further improved the average quality of life. Despite this massive improvement in health outcomes there is a growing concern that disparities in health achievements are increasing. Consider the life expectancy for African females, which was 49 years in 1978 compared to the world average of 63. By 1998, the average life expectancy for females improved by six years, whereas in African countries it only increased by two years, thus widening the life expectancy gap (WHO 1999). Disparities have emerged not only from slower rates of improvement in life expectancy. In a number of countries, overall life expectancy has declined in recent years while in many other countries, all in subSaharan Africa (SSA), it has fallen to as low as 40–43 years in 2005 (UNDP 2007).1 Added to this is the stark fact that more than 150 million children in developing areas remain underweight, and 182 million remain stunted. Moreover, progress in reducing prevalence rates has slowed in the past two decades, and increased in Africa. As a result, a reduction in the prevalence of underweight children between 1990 and 2015 – one of the MDG indicators – will not be met (Haddad et al. 2003)
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/50638
ISBN:	978-0-230-30467-3
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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