Health Care in Developing Nations

Poverty and Health in Developing Countries

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo find that for rural households, the probability that the mother is alive is 36 percentage points higher if the family has a daily per capita expenditures (DPCE) of $6 to $10 versus a DCPE of $1 to $2.  Using a panel data set specification, the authors also find that adults over 50 living on less than $2 a day are at least three times as likely to die over the next five to seven years than those living on $6 to $10 a day.

Are people poor because they are sick or do they get sick because they are poor?  The direction of causality is unknown.