Understanding the relationship between poverty and children's health

Abstract

Throughout the world, children from poor households have worse health than children from wealthier households. There are numerous channels through which such disparities may arise. For designing programs to improve children's health, it is important to identify, for example, whether these disparities arise from differences in pre-natal health inputs and behaviors (nutrition, alcohol and tobacco use during pregnancy), or differential health inputs following birth. We explore these issues for Russia, where children's health is particularly poor. We find that large health disparities between rich and poor originate largely from differences in pre-natal nutrition and alcohol use.