Why are Palestinian refugee children shorter than the children of host community in Jordan?

ABSTRACT

There is a marked height difference between Palestinian children living in the refugee camps and children of the remaining population in Jordan. Children living in refugee camps are significantly shorter than the rest of the children in the hosting population. We explore the drivers of the height gap, measured by the height for age z-score, among children residing in refugee camps and the non-camp residents. A Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition is used to quantify the sources of the inequalities between the two groups into two components; one that is explained by regional differences in the level of the determinants, and another part that is explained by differences in the effect of the determinants of the child nutritional status. Our results suggest that the endowment effect dominates the coefficients effect. More specifically, the height gap is mainly driven by wealth disparities between the two groups. Poverty alleviation programs such as conditional cash transfers programs and microfinance to camps’ residents would help to reduce the spatial nutrition inequalities.

KEWORADS:

• Child malnutrition
• refugees
• camps
• Blinder
• Oaxaca decomposition
• Jordan

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the academic editor of this journal, and the anonymous reviewers, for the invaluable comments and suggestions that substantially improved the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Assuming exogeneity, the conditional expectations of the error terms in Equations 1(1) ${\mathrm{H}\mathrm{A}\mathrm{Z}}_i^{camps}={\beta }^{camps}{x}_i+{\epsilon }_i^{camps}$(1) and 2(2) ${\mathrm{H}\mathrm{A}\mathrm{Z}}_i^{non-camps}={\beta }^{non-camps}{x}_i+{\epsilon }_i^{non-camps}$(2) are zero.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ahmed Shoukry Rashad

Ahmed Shoukry Rashad is a Senior Economist at the Economic Studies and Policies Sector, Dubai Department of Economic Development at the Government of Dubai. His research interests are development economics, health economics and labor economics. He taught at Frankfurt School of Finance and Management and a consultant for the United Nations. Rashad is the author of 10 publications as peer-reviewed journal articles. Rashad obtained his PhD in Economics from Philipps University Marburg in 2016.

Mesbah Fathy Sharaf

Mesbah Fathy Sharaf is an Associate Teaching Professor of Economics at University of Alberta in Canada and Damanhour University in Egypt. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. His research interests are Development Economics, Health Economics and Economics of migration. Dr. Sharaf is a consultant for several international organizations including UN-ESCWA, and the ERF.

Elhussien Ibrahim Mansour

ElHussien Ibrahim Mansour is a Protocol and Public Relations Officer, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Consulate General in New York. Dr. Mansour is currently an adjunct assistant professor in New York college city of technology (CUNY). Dr. Mansour lectured in several U.S. Universities such as Fairleigh Dickinson University, NJ. He holds a PhD in Economics from the New School for Social Research, New York, USA. His research interests are Development Economics, Health Economics, and Socioeconomics.