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Soc Indic Res (2010) 98:291299 DOI 10.1007/s11205-009-9541-7
Frank W. Young Kris Merschrod
Accepted: 11 October 2009 / Published online: 24 October 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009
Abstract Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are widely accepted in developing countries as a crucial organizational asset. They combine entrepreneurship, provision of quasi-government services and donor nancing, but their conceptual status is unclear. Are they the organizational embodiments of social capital, generating cohesion and superior performance, or do they expand the competitiveness of the province, contributing to superior performance via political pluralism? This analysis of the relationship of NGOs to three criteria of child health in the provinces of Peru examines that question and concludes that NGOs are best interpreted as actors in provinces that foster political contestation. As such they contribute to the growth of a core dimension of democracy in developing countries and to higher levels of health.
Keywords Child health Non-governmental organizations Pluralism
Peru Latin America
1 Introduction
With the recent publication of two books (Hall and Lamont 2009; Young 2009) and a spate of articles, the search for a general and testable explanation of population health has accelerated. Population health refers to the rates for a family of indicators, such as life expectancy, infant and child mortality and age-adjusted mortality that are increasingly used for comparisons of communities such as nation-states, provinces, districts, and on down to the household. These indicators have been around for decades, but are increasingly recognized as universal yardsticks for both health and the organization of communities.
The challenge is to nd a model that explains why communities at a given level show population health differentials. Why do some counties, for example, have higher (or lower) age-adjusted mortality? Of course, that question can be asked of per capita income, education, poverty, and a whole list of diseases. But population health is different in that it
F. W. Young (&) K. Merschrod
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]
Child Health and NGOs in Peruvian Provinces
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measures rates of whole organism conditions in contrast to the typically site-specic disease rates. That feature opens the door to investigating both non-medical causes and non-economic causes. In short, we are back to Durkheims answer to the question: Why do...