Improvements in children's health: Does inequality matter?

The literature on the contributions to poverty reduction of average improvements in living standards vs. distributional changes uses only one measure of well-being - income or expenditure. Given that poverty is defined by deprivation over different dimensions, we explore the role of average improvements and distributional changes in children's health and nutrition using the height of young children as our measure of well-being. Similar to the income literature, we find that shifts in the mean level of heights, not changes in distribution, account for most improvements in heights. Unlike the literature on income inequality, however, there is a positive association between improvements in average heights and reduced dispersion of those heights. © Springer 2005.