Andrés F. Palacio Ch.

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Mind the gap

The aim of this dissertation is to examine how differences in socioeconomic status, race and place of residence interact with infant and child mortality in Colombia over the period 1967-2010. One of the reasons why the study focuses on infant and child mortality is that the living conditions of children are outside their control, and therefore a good measure of inequality of opportunity. This study explores two large micro-datasets, the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series-International (IPUMS-I) and finds that mortality is socially and racially stratified in Colombia. Health care alone cannot reduce the relative differences in mortality In addition, relative differences are also dependent on the context at themunicipality level, and the geographical differencess in mortality have widened over the period. Thus, improvements in survival have been made, absolute inequalities have narrowed, but relative inequalities have not improved, remained high and even widened according to some measures. The conclusion may be unexpected for the public opinion given that the decline in absolute inequalities are taken as a sign of overall improvement, but the focus on relative inequalities reveals that patterns of inequality in Colombia are persistently high. If attention is not directed towards these patterns, they might worsen. The benefits of growth are less concentrated than before, but the pattern of exclusion is evident, and is related to historically conditioned socioeconomic inequalities between groups, areas and ethnicities.