This paper documents inequality in health and education outcomes by constructing an index of human capital disaggregated by quintiles of socioeconomic status (SES) for a sample 51 mostly low- and middle-income countries. The index measures the expected future human capital of children born today, following the methodology of the World Bank Human Capital Index that was launched in October 2018. Within-country disparities in human capital outcomes across SES quintiles are large, accounting for roughly one-third of the total variation. On average,...

Income inequality is one of the most profound social, economic, and political challenges of our time. The gap between the rich and the poor has been regarded as a major concern for policy makers. This gap is at its highest level in decades for developed economies, while the inequality trend has been rising in many developing countries. In Asia, despite recent economic growth, income distribution has been worsening as well. This book contributes to the existing literature on inequality in Asia by overviewing the new trend of inequality in Asia a...

City Deals’ are new governance instruments for urban development. Vast evidence exists on the relationship between urban factors and health equity, but little research applies a health equity lens to urban policy-making. This paper does precisely that for the Western Sydney City Deal (WSCD) in Australia. We conducted a critical discourse analysis of publicly available documents and interviews with the WSCD’s main architects, applying insights from relevant theories. We find ‘pro-growth’ discourse to encourage economic investment dominates any r...

Background: This study aims to assess geographical distribution of hospitals and extent of inequalities in hospital beds against socioeconomic status (SES) of residents of five metropolitan cities in Iran. Methods: A cross-sectional analysis was conducted to measure geographical inequality in hospital and hospital bed distributions of 68 districts in five metropolitan cities during 2016 using geographic information system (GIS), and Gini and Concentration indices. Correlation analysis was performed to show the relationship between the SES and i...

WHO’s World health statistics report 2021 presents the latest data for more than 50 health-related indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals and WHO’s “Triple Billion” targets. It finds an overall increase in global life expectancy and healthy life expectancy at birth as a result of improvements in several communicable diseases, maternal, perinatal and nutritional conditions, noncommunicable diseases, injuries and their underlying determinants. Persisting inequalities also continue to impact population health in most, if not all, aspects...

The efforts chronicled in this series of case studies are not only designed to improve health outcomes, they are also poised to save the country billions in health care spending. According to one study published in 2009, more than 30 percent of direct medical costs faced by African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans can be tied to health inequi- ties. Because of inequitable access to care, these populations are sicker when they do find a source of care and incur higher medical costs. That 30 percent translates to more than $230 billion ov...

This publication reviews the region's inequality trends, challenges and achievements and identifies policy gaps across the three dimensions of inequality--inequality of outcome, inequality of opportunity and inequality of impact. It also discusses the potential impact of rapid and disruptive technological advances, such as machine learning, and puts forward a broad set of policy recommendations for reducing all forms of inequality for the effective implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its core tenant of "leaving no ...

This chapter investigates recent advances in our understanding of the global distribution of income, and produces the first estimates of global inequality that take into account data on the incomes of the top one percent within countries. We discuss conceptual and methodological issues – including alternative definitions of the global distribution, the use of household surveys and national accounts data, the use of purchasing power parity exchange rates, and the incorporation of recently available data on top incomes from income tax records. We...

Background Coverage levels for essential interventions aimed at reducing deaths of mothers and children are increasing steadily in most low-income and middle-income countries. We assessed how much poor and rural populations in these countries are benefiting from national-level progress.

The 10 states of Southeast Asia have combined to form the developing world’s most successful and durable regional grouping, the Association of Southeast Asian Na-tions, ASEAN. Economic integration among them is high and increasing. The ambi-tious ASEAN Economic Community is scheduled to take effect from December 2015, and should further accelerate this integration. But the socio-economic and institution-al disparities among them are also very large. This paper therefore asks the ques-tion, does it make sense to contemplate a ‘Southeast Asian de...

ASEAN has gradually built, on the basis of both shared interests and common principles and norms, various practices and mechanisms that helped prevent conflict among its members and allowed it to play an autonomous role in shaping the regional security architecture. Overcoming the member states' preoccupation with their own national concerns to give way to advocacy of collective interests has remained difficult, but progress is being made. Part A of this volume looks at the processes and dynamics, challenges, and opportunities of ASEAN politica...

Since 2000, Southeast Asia has had some of the fastest growing economies in the world. Indonesia’s economy has enjoyed 6 percent annual growth—but will its lack of infrastructure and its commodity dependence soon reveal some cracks in its economy? The remarkable growth in the Philippines will not last unless domestic investment is elevated. Thailand’s growth has stalled amid political turmoil, and it is currently in a classic credit bubble. Vietnam still generates impressive growth, but it has a banking problem, high inflation, and ubiquitous c...