WP 536 Child Malnutrition and Antenatal Care: Evidence from three Latin American countries / by N.F. Ramirez, L.F. Gamboa, A.S. Bedi and R. Sparrow
ISS Working Paper 356 by Nohora F. Ramirez, Luis F. Gamboa, Arjun S. Bedi and Robert Sparrow
Abstract
The importance of ever-earlier interventions to help children reach their physical and cognitive potential is increasingly being recognized. In part, as a result of this, in developing countries, antenatal care is becoming an important element of strategies to prevent child stunting in utero and later. Notwithstanding their policy relevance and substantial expansion, empirical evidence on the role of antenatal care (ANC) programs in combating stunting is scarce.
This study analyzes the role of ANC programs in determining the level and distribution of child stunting in three Andean countries - Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru - where since the 1990s, expanding access to such care has been an explicit policy intervention to tackle child malnutrition.
We find that the use of such services is associated with a reduction in the level of malnutrition and at the same time access to such services is relatively equally distributed. While this is a positive sign, it also suggests that further expansion of ANC programs is unlikely to play a large role in reducing inequalities in malnutrition.
Keywords
Child malnutrition, antenatal care, inequality decomposition, height for age
About the authors
| Nohora F. Ramirez, former MA student (Economics of Development), now at Faculty of Economics, University of Rosario, Colombia. |
| Luis F. Gamboa, Professor Faculty of Economics, University of Rosario, Colombia. |
| Arjun Singh Bedi, Professor in the staff group, Economics of Development, at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. |
| Robert Sparrow, Crawford School of Economics and Government, Australian National University, Australia. |
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Publication date: Wednesday, 07 March 2012
