The prevalence of child undernutrition in India is among the highest in the world; nearly double that of Sub-Saharan Africa, with dire consequences for morbidity, mortality, productivity and economic growth. Drawing on qualitative studies and quantitative evidence from large household surveys,...

This rapid assessment examines the effect of Mongolia's economic crisis on government health budgets and health expenditure, household out-of-pocket spending and donor health commitments. This study was part of a larger assessment conducted in four countries on the effects of the economic crisis...

Focusing on the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), India's largest nutrition and early child development program, this paper describes the political, organizational, and technical challenges in building and sustaining an outcomes-oriented approach to nutrition program monitoring. The...

This collection of papers explores the major challenges to the sustainability of health and pension system financing in the countries of the Western Balkans - Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and the province of Kosovo. It focuses on...

This paper explores the dimensions of child undernutrition in India, and examines the effectiveness of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) program in addressing it. The paper finds that although levels of undernutrition in India declined modestly during the 1990s, the reductions...

This paper examines the determinants of child nutritional status in seven provinces of China during the 1990s, focusing specifically on the role of two areas of public policy, namely health system reforms and the one child policy. The empirical relationship between income and nutritional status,...

This paper explores the major challenges to the sustainability of health sector financing in the countries of the Western Balkans - Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and the province of Kosovo. It focuses on how the incentives created...

Providing protection against the financial risk of high out-of-pocket health spending is one of the main goals of the Philippines’ health strategy. Yet, as this paper shows using eight household surveys, health spending increased by 150 percent (real) from 2000 to 2012, with the sharpest...

We examine differential progress on health Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) between the poor and the better off within countries. Our findings are based on an original analysis of 235 DHS and MICS surveys spanning 64 developing countries over the 1990–2011 period. We track five health...

This paper investigates the extent to which the health systems of the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Kosovo) have succeeded in providing financial protection against adverse health events. The authors examine disparities in health status, healthcare...