SOCIAL SCIENCE
Urban Poverty and Health

Nearly all future population growth in the developing world will occur in cities, yet little is known about differences in health between the urban and rural populations of developing countries, nor about how urban health varies with poverty. Among relatively poor urban children, the disadvantages of urban living (crowding and possibly greater exposure to communicable disease) can offset the advantages of better urban service provision and generally higher incomes.

The Population Council’s urban research is underway on two fronts:

• analysis of urban poverty measures based on demographic survey data; and
• development of new, spatially sensitive methods for estimating and projecting urban populations, with attention to where the urban poor are located within and across cities.

These activities have been informed by a major activity completed in 2003, the publication of Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2003). This volume, which focuses on urban health, reproductive health, urban poverty, and governance in the cities of the developing world, presents the consensus views of a 15-member international panel of scholars convened by the Committee on Population, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences. Mark R. Montgomery organized and co-chaired the panel from 1999 to the conclusion of its work in 2003 and served as the principal editor of the volume.

In 2005 Montgomery and Alex Ezeh contributed two chapters to the Handbook of Urban Health: Populations, Methods, and Practice (New York: Springer, 2005) setting out an agenda for further work on urban poverty and health in poor countries.

Selected Projects

Current

• Poverty, Gender, and Youth

  • Developing world: New Methods for Estimating and Projecting Urban Populations (2004–ongoing)

  • Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa: Measures of Urban Poverty (1999–ongoing)

  • South Africa: Needs Assessment for Marginalized, Socially Excluded Populations in Johannesburg (10/07–3/09)

Completed

• Poverty, Gender, and Youth

  • Burkina Faso: The Ouagadougou Urban Health and Poverty Initiative (completed 2004)

Publications Resources on this issue

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