Question

Identify whether the following statements are True, False or Uncertain. Explain your answers

(a) From consumption surveys, there is clear evidence that the poor (those living on less than $1.25 a day) spend almost all (around 90%) of their income on food consumption.

(b) Banerjee, Deaton and Duflo (2004) found that villagers could not utilize government health services regularly because the clinics were only open on Thursdays.

(c) If the S-shaped relationship between health tomorrow and health today holds in reality, then interventions providing moderate short-run improvements in health may be even more effective over the long run.

Answer 1

ANSWERS:

(a) FALSE. Poor households spend most (30%) of their income on food, compared to non-poor households which only spend 10.5%, data from Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) revealed.

(b) FALSE. Villagers could not utilize government health services regularly because 45 percent of medical personnel are absent in subcenters and aid posts, and 36 percent are absent in the (larger) primary health centers and community health centers. These high rates of absences are not due to staff attending patients; whenever the nurse was absent from a subcenter, we made sure to look for her in the community. Since subcenters are often staffed by only one nurse, this high absenteeism means that these facilities are often closed: we found the subcenters closed 56 percent of the time during regular opening hours.

(c) TRUE. If the S-shaped relationship between health tomorrow and health today holds in reality, then interventions providing moderate short-run improvements in health may be even more effective over the long run because the shape of a graph that shows slow build, then fast growth, then flattening. You know, in the shape of an S. In other words, short-run improvements in health would show a rapid growth at the beginning then it will slow down, become less effective as the time get widened. Refer below chart: