scholarly journals Pursuing the limits of child survival in the most and least developed countries

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iván Mejía-Guevara ◽  
Wenyun Zuo ◽  
Laust H. Mortensen ◽  
Shripad Tuljapurkar
Keyword(s):  
Child Mortality ◽  
Child Survival ◽  
National Income ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
Life Expectancy At Birth ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Age Patterns ◽  
Sub Saharan

Summary paragraphThe epidemiological transition from young to old deaths in high-income countries reduced mortality at all ages, but a major role was played by a decline of infant and child mortality from infectious diseases1,2 that greatly increased life expectancy at birth2,3. Over time, declines in infectious disease continue but chronic and degenerative causes persist4,5, so we might expect under-5 deaths to be concentrated in the first month of life. However, little is known about the age-pattern of this transition in early mortality or its potential limits. Here we first describe the limit using detailed data on Denmark, Japan, France, and the USA— developed countries with low under-5 mortality. The limiting pattern of under-5 deaths concentrates in the first month, but is surprisingly dispersed over later ages: we call this the early rectangularization of mortality. Then we examine the progress towards this limit of 31 developing countries from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)—the region with the highest under-5 mortality6. In these countries, we find that early deaths have large age-heterogeneities; and that the age patterns of death is an important marker of progress in the mortality transition at early ages. But a negative association between national income and under-5 mortality levels, confirmed here, does not help explain reductions in child mortality during the transition.

scholarly journals Child mortality and poverty in three world regions (the West, Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa) 1988–2010: Evidence of relative intra-regional neglect?

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (8) ◽  
pp. 734-741 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Pritchard ◽  
Steven Keen
Keyword(s):  
Child Mortality ◽  
Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽  
Rank Order ◽  
National Income ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
World Regions ◽  
Poverty Measures ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Relationship

Aims: Poverty kills children. This study assesses the relationship between poverty and child mortality rates (CMRs) in 71 societies from three world regions to determine whether some countries, relative to their region, neglect their children. Methods: Spearman rank order correlations were calculated to determine any association between the CMR and poverty data, including income inequality and gross national income. A current CMR one standard deviation (SD) above or below the regional average and a percentage change between 1988 and 2010 were used as the measures to assess the progress of nations. Results: There were positive significant correlations between higher CMRs and relative poverty measures in all three regions. In Western countries, the current CMRs in the USA, New Zealand and Canada were 1 SD below the Western mean. The narrowest income inequalities, apart from Japan, were seen in the Scandinavian nations alongside low CMRs. In Asia, the current CMRs in Pakistan, Myanmar and India were the highest in their region and were 1 SD below the regional mean. Alongside South Korea, these nations had the lowest percentage reductions in CMRs. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the current CMRs in Somalia, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola were the highest in their region and were 1 SD below the regional mean. Conclusions: Those concerned with the pursuit of social justice need to alert their societies to the corrosive impact of poverty on child mortality. Progress in reducing CMRs provides an indication of how well nations are meeting the needs of their children. Further country-specific research is required to explain regional differences.

scholarly journals Malavika Karlekar (ed.). Paradigms of Learning: The Total Literacy Campaign in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. 2004. 356 pages. Paperback. Indian Rupees 375.00.

2003 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-169
Author(s):  
Samina Nazli
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Adult Literacy ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
New Delhi ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
Literacy Campaign ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Sub Saharan

Raising the standards of literacy in the developing world has been a major goal of the less developed countries since most of them became independent in the process of decolonisation that followed World War II. The Human Development Report 2004, brought out by the United Nations Development Programme lists some major improvements in increasing literacy levels of a number of countries between the year 1990 and 2002. For example, low human development countries like Togo increased their adult literacy rates from 44.2 percent in 1990 to 59.6 percent in 2002. Congo saw an increase in its literacy rate for the same period from 67.1 percent to 82.8 percent. The rates for Uganda, Kenya, Yemen, and Nigeria are 56.1 percent and 68.9 percent, 70.8 percent and 84.3 percent, 32.7 percent and 49.0 percent, and 48.7 percent and 68.8 percent respectively. If one examines the breakdown by region, the least developed countries as a group saw an increase in their adult literacy rates from 43.0 percent to 52.5 percent, the Arab states from 50.8 percent to 63.3 percent, South Asia from 47.0 percent to 57.6 percent, Sub-Saharan Africa from 50.8 percent to 63.2 percent and East Asia and the Pacific from 79.8 percent to 90.3 percent. If we look at the increase in the levels of literacy from the perspective of medium human development and low human development, the figures are 71.8 percent and 80.4 percent, and 42.5 percent and 54.3 percent, respectively.

Job Creation and Wages in Least Developed Countries: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Rud ◽  
Ija Trapeznikova
Keyword(s):  
Job Creation ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Labour Markets ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
High Wage ◽  
Micro Data ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
Developed Economies ◽  
Sector Model ◽  
Sub Saharan

Abstract Least developed economies are characterised by poorly functioning labour markets: only a small fraction of workers is in paid employment, where productivity and wages are low. We incorporate a standard search framework into a two-sector model of development to assess the importance of different obstacles to job creation and productivity. The model provides new insights in the characterisation of poorly developed labour markets that are observed in the data, such as high wage dispersion. We estimate the model using micro data for six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and highlight the empirical relevance of labour market frictions, entry costs and skills.

Postharvest losses and waste in developed and less developed countries: opportunities to improve resource use

2010 ◽  
Vol 149 (S1) ◽  
pp. 37-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. HODGES ◽  
J. C. BUZBY ◽  
B. BENNETT
Keyword(s):  
Financial Incentives ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Less Developed Countries ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Food Losses ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Uk

SUMMARYThis review compares and contrasts postharvest food losses (PHLs) and waste in developed countries (especially the USA and the UK) with those in less developed countries (LDCs), especially the case of cereals in sub-Saharan Africa. Reducing food losses offers an important way of increasing food availability without requiring additional production resources, and in LDCs it can contribute to rural development and poverty reduction by improving agribusiness livelihoods. The critical factors governing PHLs and food waste are mostly after the farm gate in developed countries but before the farm gate in LDCs. In the foreseeable future (e.g. up to 2030), the main drivers for reducing PHLs differ: in the developed world, they include consumer education campaigns, carefully targeted taxation and private and public sector partnerships sharing the responsibility for loss reduction. The LDCs’ drivers include more widespread education of farmers in the causes of PHLs; better infrastructure to connect smallholders to markets; more effective value chains that provide sufficient financial incentives at the producer level; opportunities to adopt collective marketing and better technologies supported by access to microcredit; and the public and private sectors sharing the investment costs and risks in market-orientated interventions.

scholarly journals Age Distribution, Trends, and Forecasts of Under-5 Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iván Mejía-Guevara ◽  
Wenyun Zuo ◽  
Eran Bendavid ◽  
Nan Li ◽  
Shripad Tuljapurkar
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Child Mortality ◽  
Age Distribution ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Death Rates ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Mortality Estimation ◽  
Age Patterns ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Mortality Estimates

AbstractBackgroundDespite the sharp decline in global under-5 deaths since 1990, uneven progress has been achieved across and within countries. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the Millennium Development Goals targets for child mortality were met only by a few countries, and recently new targets were set in goals for Sustainable Development that include the eradication of preventable deaths by reducing neonatal and under-5 mortality rates to at least as low 12 and 25 per 1000 live births by 2030, respectively. As the reduction of preventable deaths has a direct impact on their age distribution, the foci of this study are assessing age patterns, trends over time, and forecasts of mortality rates in Sub-Saharan Africa.Methods and findingsData came from 104 nationally-representative Demographic and Health Surveys with full birth histories from 31 Sub-Saharan African countries from 1990 to 2016 (a total of 448 country-years of data). We assessed the distribution of age at death through the following demographic model. First, we used a direct method for the estimation of death rates with full-birth histories from survey data to construct age profiles of under-5 mortality on a monthly basis. Second, a two-dimensional P-spline approach was used to smooth out raw estimates of death rates by age and time. Third, a variant of the Lee-Carter model, designed for populations with limited data, was used to fit and forecast age profiles of mortality. We used mortality estimates from the United Nations Inter-agency group for Child Mortality Estimation to adjust, validate and minimize the risk of bias in survival, truncation, and recall in mortality estimation.Our study has three salient findings. First, we observe a monotonous decline of death rates at every age in most countries, but with notable differences in the age-patterns over time. Second, our projections of continued decline of child mortality differ from existing estimates from the United Nations Inter-agency group for Child Mortality Estimation in 5 countries for both neonatal and under-5 mortality. Finally, we predict that only 5 countries (Guinea, Liberia, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda) are on track to achieve the sustainable development goal targets on child mortality by 2030. Poor data quality issues that include bias in the report of births and deaths, or age heaping, remain a limitation of this study.ConclusionsThis study is the first to combine full birth history data and mortality estimates from external reliable sources to model age patterns of under-5 mortality across time in Sub-Saharan Africa. We demonstrate that countries with a rapid pace of mortality reduction across ages would be more likely to achieve the sustainable development goal targets of child mortality reduction. Our mortality model predicts that if neonatal and under-5 deaths decline at the rates observed during the last 25 years, only 5 countries would reach those targets by 2030, 15 would achieve them between 2030 and 2050, and 11 afterwards.

Information communication technologies for gender and development in Africa

2012 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 240-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christobel Asiedu
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Information Communication Technologies ◽  
Communication Tool ◽  
Information Communication ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Development Literature

The information communication technologies for development literature (ICT4D) has identified information communication technologies (ICTs) as a significant tool for economic and social development of least developed countries. The discourse has marginalized radio and promoted ICTs. However, there are numerous challenges to using ICTs as a communication tool in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Although investment in technology could create a much more effective use of ICTs, local appropriation should be at the center of any communication tool for development. This article discusses the widespread exposure to radio in SSA, and emphasizes the effectiveness of using radio to create indigenous knowledge, and in the process empower local women to actively frame their own messages and be active participants in development agendas. Combining radio and ICTs, also known as technological blending, would make certain that rural, poor and non-literate women are not only given meaningful access to new technologies, but also ‘brought into’ the development discourse, as active agents of social change.

Extending the Social Identity of Information Systems

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-33
Author(s):  
Pratim Datta ◽  
Victor W. Mbarika ◽  
Chitu Okoli
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Presence ◽  
Developing World ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
Systems Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sub Saharan

Although Benbasat and Zmud’s (2003) pronouncement of an “identity crisis” within the information systems (IS) discipline has been mitigated in the industrialized world, the authors are concerned that the crisis still looms large in the developing world. The author’s objective is to theoretically underpin how the discipline can extend its social presence in developing countries to help sustain life. These arguments are contextualized with an in-depth examination of an area for which information systems research has much to offer: telemedicine. Telemedicine is an information systems intensive method concerning the remote delivery of healthcare. Telemedicine is fundamental to any healthcare solution in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)— a capital-starved society, home to 33 of the 48 least developed countries of the world, and suffering from a dire shortage of medical professionals. The social, political, and economic idiosyncrasies of SSA require a different lens to investigate telemedicine to induce social development. This paper proposes a research framework for telemedicine transfer in the context of SSA with propositions pertinent to the developing world. The authors draw on thorough implications of this research agenda as a stepping stone to recreate a social identity in developing nations plagued with more immediate concerns surrounding basic human sustenance.

scholarly journals Wpływ międzynarodowych instytucji finansowych na sytuację gospodarczą krajów najsłabiej rozwiniętych

2019 ◽  
Vol 19(34) (3) ◽  
pp. 57-66
Author(s):  
Jakub Kraciuk
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
International Financial Institutions ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The International Monetary Fund

The aim of the study was to show the impact of the activities of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on the economic situation of the least developed countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It was found that the operation of these organizations in accordance with the principles of the Washington consensus did not bring the expected results, and the credit aid of IMF and World Bank increased debt, but did not contribute to a significant GDP growth per capita in the analyzed countries. Therefore, it is necessary to change the rules of operation of international financial institutions towards least developed countries. The proposed adjustment programs are to generate economic growth, which will be subordinated to the needs of societies, and the choice of economic and social policy options should be adapted to the conditions of a given country.

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