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Child Health Indicator

Description

This composite indicator measures a government’s commitment to child health as measured by child mortality, the sound management of water resources and water systems, and proper sewage disposal and sanitary control.

Relationship to Growth & Poverty Reduction

Improving child health leads to a more productive and healthier workforce both presently and in the future. Inadequate water and sanitation is the second leading cause of child mortality; it kills more young children than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined.53 Improved sanitation and increased access to water have numerous economic benefits, including productivity savings in the form of fewer missed days of work or school due to illness from unclean water; the economic contribution of the lives saved from diarrheal disease; decreasing treatment expenditures for diarrheal disease at both the individual and government levels and time savings related to searching for facilities and water collection that would increase time for income-earning work.54 Vulnerable groups, such as women, children, handicapped individuals and the very poor, are particularly affected by inadequate sanitation and water quality, meaning that improvement in these areas would help these groups the most.55 In children in particular, improved sanitation and water quality have been found to improve learning outcomes due to alleviating the burden of illness and helminthes (parasites) on cognitive development.56

Methodology

Indicator Institution Methodology

This index is calculated as the average of three, equally weighted indicators:

  • Access to Improved Sanitation: Produced by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), this indicator measures the percentage of the population with access to facilities that hygienically separate human excreta from human, animal, and insect contact. Facilities such as sewers or septic tanks, pour-flush latrines and simple pit or ventilated improved pit latrines are assumed to be adequate, provided that they are not public and not shared with other households.
  • Access to Improved Water: Produced by WHO and UNICEF, this indicator measures the percentage of the population with access to at least 20 liters of water per person per day from an “improved” source (household connections, public standpipes, boreholes, protected dug wells, protected springs, and rainwater collection) within one kilometer of the user’s dwelling and with collection times of no more than 30 minutes.
  • Child Mortality (Ages 1-4): Produced by the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME), this indicator measures the probability of dying between ages 1 and 4.

MCC Methodology

CIESIN/YCELP’s Child Health Score = [ 0.33 x Child Mortality ] + [ 0.33 x Access to Water ] + [ 0.33 x Access to Sanitation]

In creating the index used for the FY25 data, Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) and the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP) relied on the most recent child mortality data ages 1-4 (4q1), water access data, and sanitation access data. If no updates from the most recent year were available, previous data were applied. Each of the three components (child mortality, access to water, and access to sanitation) is equally weighted (33.3%) in the overall index. Country scores are reported as 2023 data on the FY25 MCC Country Scorecards. As better data become available, CIESIN and YCELP make backward revisions to historical data. In FY20, CIESIN changed its source of Child Mortality data from the UN Population Division’s World Population Prospects (WPP data) to the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME data) since IGME updates its data more frequently than WPP. As such, some variation in Child Health data before FY20 could be attributed to the new underlying data source.

Footnotes
  • 53. UNICEF. 2009. Diarrhoea: Why children are still dying and what can be done. Access at: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2009/9789241598415_eng.pdf.
  • 54. Cumming, Oliver. 2008. Tackling the silent killer: The case for sanitation. London: Water Aid. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. 2011. Benefits of Investing in Water and Sanitation: An OECD Perspective. Paris: OECD Publishing. Hutton et al, UNDP (2006) ‘Economic and health effects of increasing coverage of low cost sanitation interventions,’ Human Development Report Office occasional paper Evans, Hutton and Haller (2004), “Closing the sanitation gap: the case for better public funding of sanitation and hygiene”, OECD Round Table on Sustainable Development 2004 UNDP (2006) Human Development Report: Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty, and the Global Water Crisis. New York: UNDP. World Bank (2008) Environmental Health and Child Survival: Epidemiology, Economics, and Experiences. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. Haller L, Hutton G, and Bartram J. (2007). Estimating the costs and health benefits of water and sanitation improvements at global level. Journal of Water and Health 5:4, 476-480. Sijbesma, C. (2008). Sanitation and Hygiene in South Asia: Progress and Challenges. Chapter 25 from Beyond Construction Use by All. IRC, WaterAid and the WSSCC,Delft, Netherlands.
  • 55. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. 2011. Benefits of Investing in Water and Sanitation: An OECD Perspective. Paris: OECD Publishing. Evans, Hutton and Haller (2004), “Closing the sanitation gap: the case for better public funding of sanitation and hygiene”, OECD Round Table on Sustainable Development 2004 UNDP (2006) Human Development Report: Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty, and the Global Water Crisis. New York: UNDP. World Bank (2008) Environmental Health and Child Survival: Epidemiology, Economics, and Experiences. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. Sijbesma, C. (2008). Sanitation and Hygiene in South Asia: Progress and Challenges. Chapter 25 from Beyond Construction Use by All. IRC, WaterAid and the WSSCC,Delft, Netherlands.
  • 56. Evans, Hutton and Haller (2004), “Closing the sanitation gap: the case for better public funding of sanitation and hygiene”, OECD Round Table on Sustainable Development 2004. UNDP (2006) Human Development Report: Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty, and the Global Water Crisis. New York: UNDP. World Bank (2008) Environmental Health and Child Survival: Epidemiology, Economics, and Experiences. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. Bethony, Jeffrey, Simon Brokker, Marco Albonico, Stefan M. Geiger, Alex Loukas, David Diemert, and Peter J. Hortez. 2006. Soil-trasmitted helminth infections: ascariasis, trichuriasis, and hookworm. Lancet, 367: 1521-32.

Source

  • Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) and the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP) (CIESIN/YCELP)