Place and Child Health : The Interaction of Population Density and Sanitation in Developing Countries
A long literature in demography debates the importance of place for health. This paper assesses whether the importance of dense settlement for child mortality and child height is moderated by exposure to local sanitation behavior. Is open defecatio...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank Group, Washington, DC
2014
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/11/20426961/place-child-health-interaction-population-density-sanitation-developing-countries http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20641 |
| Summary: | A long literature in demography debates
the importance of place for health. This paper assesses
whether the importance of dense settlement for child
mortality and child height is moderated by exposure to local
sanitation behavior. Is open defecation, without a toilet or
latrine, worse for infant mortality and child height where
population density is greater? Is poor sanitation an
important mechanism by which population density in?uences
health outcomes? The paper uses newly assembled data sets to
present two complementary analyses, which represent di?erent
points in a trade-o? between external and internal validity.
The first analysis concentrates on external validity by
studying infant mortality and child height in a large,
international child-level data set of 172 Demographic and
Health Surveys, matched to census population density data
for 1,800 subnational regions. The second analysis
concentrates on internal validity by studying child height
in Bangladeshi districts, with a new data set constructed
with Geographic Information System techniques, and controls
for ?xed e?ects at a high level of geographic resolution.
The paper ?nds a statistically robust and quantitatively
comparable interaction between sanitation and population
density with both approaches: open defecation externalities
are more important for child health outcomes where people
live more closely together. |
|---|