The familial technique for linking XXXX with poverty.

@entity1 @entity7310 @entity204
BACKGROUND: Recognition of the synergy between health and poverty is now apparent in the development strategies of many low-income countries, and markers are needed to monitor progress towards poverty-relevant goals. @entity7310 has been proposed as a possible candidate but evidence is lacking on the link with poverty at the level of individuals. We introduce a new approach to exploring the relation--the familial technique. METHODS: We used data from 11 household surveys in ten developing countries to create percentage distributions of @entity1 according to their poverty-related characteristics and survival status (alive, non- @entity204 , @entity204 ). These @entity1 were identified as the sisters of the adult female respondents in the surveys, and were assigned the same poverty status as their respondent sibling. FINDINGS: The analysis showed significant associations, across a diverse set of countries, between @entity1 's poverty status (proxied by educational level, source of water, and type of toilet and floor) and survival. These associations indicated a gradient within and across the survival categories. With increasing poverty, the proportion of @entity1 dying of non-maternal causes generally increased, and the proportion dying of maternal causes increased consistently. Further analysis reported here for one of the countries--Indonesia, revealed that about 32-34% of the maternal @entity204 occurred among @entity1 from the poorest quintile of the population. The risk of @entity204 in this country was around 3-4 times greater in the poorest than the richest group. INTERPRETATION: This new method makes efficient use of existing survey data to explore the relation between maternal mortality and poverty, and has wider potential for examining the poor-rich gap.
