William Easterly, Center for Global Development - Institute for International Economics, Working Paper No.1, January 2002.
This paper argues that the conflicting results in the voluminous recent literature on inequality and growth are missing the big picture on inequality and long-run economic development. Consistent with the provocative hypothesis of Engerman and Sokoloff 1997 and Sokoloff and Engerman 2000, this paper confirms with cross-country data that commodity endowments predict the middle class share of income and the middle class share predicts development. The use of commodity endowments as instruments for middle class share addresses problems of measurement and endogeneity of inequality. The paper tests the mechanisms - institutions, redistributive policies, and schooling - by which the literature has argued that a higher middle class share raises per capita income. It tests the inequality hypothesis for institutional quality, redistributive policies, and schooling against other recent hypotheses in the literature. The results were subjet to testing for over-identifying restrictions, reverse causality, and other checks for robustness. While finding some evidence consistent with other development fundamentals, the paper finds high inequality to independently be a large and statistically significant barrier to developing the mechanisms by which prosperity is achieved.
Equity in Health
Paula Braveman, Department of Family & Community Medicine, University of California, USA; Eleuther Tarimo, Consultant, Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, Harare, Zimbabwe. Available online at the Social Science & Medicine website. While interest in social disparities in health within affluent nations has been growing, discussion of equity in health with regard to low- and middle-income countries has generally focused on north-south and between-country differences, rather than on gaps between social groups within the countries where most of the world's population lives. This paper aims to articulate a rationale for focusing on within- as well as between-country health disparities in nations of all per capita income levels, and to suggest relevant reference material, particularly for developing country researchers. explicit concerns about equity in health and its determinants need to be placed higher on the policy and research agendas of both international and national organizations in low-, middle-, and high-income countries. International agencies can strengthen or undermine national efforts to achieve greater equity. The Primary Health Care strategy is at least as relevant today as it was two decades ago; but equity needs to move from being largely implicit to becoming an explicit component of the strategy, and progress toward greater equity must be carefully monitored in countries of all per capita income levels. Particularly in the context of an increasingly globalized world, improvements in health for privileged groups should suggest what could, with political will, be possible for all.
Zimbabwe's government has declared a state of emergency over HIV/AIDS and will allow the importation and manufacture of generic drugs, a local state-controlled newspaper reported. However, Lindy Francis, director of The Centre, an NGO working with people living with AIDS (PWAs) in Harare said that if true, the declaration was "five years too late".
Organized by the Rockefeller Foundation in collaboration with the World Bank and the World Health Organization. The growing efforts to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis have the potential to bring major benefits to the disadvantaged, as well as produce an important reduction in overall disease burden. However, realizing this potential and securing better health among less favored populations will require a determined effort. There is need both to modify the inequitable patterns of disease risks and consequences and to pursue aggressively a more equitable distribution of benefits from programs dealing with HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced its first round of grants to country programmes to prevent and treat the three diseases on Thursday.
Three high-profile organisations are throwing their weight behind the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in its protracted legal battle with the government to widen access to the anti-HIV drug, Nevirapine. Cotlands, one of SA's best-known baby sanctuaries, the Institute for Democracy in SA (Idasa) and the Community Law Centre (CLC) are hoping to add their arguments to next month's Constitutional Court case, which will settle the long-running dispute between TAC and the government over the provision of Nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women in public healthcare facilities.
A new effort to assess the quality of HIV medicines could make treatment services more accessible to poor countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) has evaluated several HIV-related medicines and has published the first list of products which were found to meet WHO recommended standards. This initial phase of the project includes forty products from eight branded and generic manufacturers. Managed by WHO, the initiative counts on the expertise of UNICEF and the UNAIDS Secretariat, and is supported by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Bank.
President Thabo Mbeki and his cabinet have at last backed off from their controversial stance on antiretroviral drugs, with a high-powered government delegation announcing before journalists that the health department is working on a universal roll-out plan of nevirapine. In a first admission of the efficacy of the drugs, Health Minister Manto Tshabala-Msimang read from the executive's statement: "Cabinet noted that they (antiretrovirals) could help improve the conditions of people living with AIDS if administered at certain stages in the progression of the condition, in accordance with international standards."
THE Medicines Control Council says it is to go ahead with an investigation into the safety of nevirapine, the drug that prevents motherto-child transmission of HIV. The council's investigation comes a month after nevirapine's manufacturers, Boehringer Ingelheim, informed the council that it had withdrawn its application to register the drug with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
United Nations HIV/AIDS experts believe HIV/AIDS prevalence in Zanzibar is on a steady increase, but are worried that currently available data could be underestimating the actual magnitude of the pandemic in the semi-autonomous islands.