Understanding the relationship between poverty and children's health

Throughout the world, children from poor households have worse health than children from wealthier households, There are numerous channels through whi ch such disparities may arise. For designing programs to improve children's health, it is important to identify, for example, whether these disparitie s arise from differences in pre-natal health inputs and behaviors (nutritio n, alcohol and tobacco use during pregnancy), or differential health inputs following birth. We explore these issues for Russia, where children's heal th is particularly poor. We find that large health disparities between rich and poor originate largely from differences in pre-natal nutrition and alc ohol use. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.