Child Malnutrition and Mortality in Developing Countries: Evidence from a Cross-Country Analysis

Abstract

In this paper we propose and test an interpretative framework on the social and economic determinants of child malnutrition and child mortality, two key human development indicators. The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 illustrates the main economic and social factors causing child malnutrition and mortality. Section 2 identifies the main clusters of food insecure and vulnerable households and briefly describes their livelihood profiles. Section 3 exposes our cross-country estimation methodology. Section 4 reports and discusses the results. Section 5 concludes.Malnutrition; Mortality; Cross-Country Analysis; Millenium Development Goals; Food Insecurity