Assessing levels and trends of child health inequality in 88 developing countries: from 2000 to 2014

ABSTRACTBackground: Reducing child mortality was one of the Millennium Development Goals. In the current Sustainable Development Goals era, achieving equity is prioritized as a major aim.Objective: This study aims to provide a comprehensive and updated picture of inequalities in child health intervention coverage and child health outcomes by wealth status, as well as their trends between 2000 and 2014.Methods: Using data from Demographic Health Surveys and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys, we adopted three measures of inequality, including one absolute inequality indicator and two relative inequality indicators, to estimate the level and trends of inequalities in three child health outcome variables and 17 intervention coverages in 88 developing countries.Results: While improvements in child health outcomes and coverage of interventions have been observed between 2000 and 2014, large inequalities remain. There was a high level of variation between countries’ progress toward reducing child health inequal...