Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) are comparable nationally representative household surveys that have been conducted in more than 85 countries worldwide since 1984. The DHS were initially designed to expand on demographic, fertility and family planning data collected in the World Fertility Surveys and Contraceptive Prevalence Surveys, and continue to provide an important resource for the monitoring of vital statistics and population health indicators in low- and middle-income countries. The DHS collect a wide range of objective and self-reported data with a strong focus on indicators of fertility, reproductive health, maternal and child health, mortality, nutrition and self-reported health behaviours among adults. Key advantages of the DHS include high response rates, national coverage, high quality interviewer training, standardized data collection procedures across countries and consistent content over time, allowing comparability across populations cross-sectionally and over time. Data from DHS facilitate epidemiological research focused on monitoring of prevalence, trends and inequalities. A variety of robust observational data analysis methods have been used, including cross-sectional designs, repeated cross-sectional designs, spatial and multilevel analyses, intra-household designs and cross-comparative analyses. In this profile, we present an overview of the DHS along with an introduction to the potential scope for these data in contributing to the field of micro- and macro-epidemiology. DHS datasets are available for researchers through MEASURE DHS at www.measuredhs.com.

Many developed countries have experienced a sharp rise in income inequality during the past three decades, and the United States is no exception (1). For example, the average annual salary in America in inflation-adjusted 1998 dollars increased from $32,522 in 1970 to $35,864 in 1999, that is, a modest 10 percent increase over three decades. By contrast over the same period, the average annual compensation of the top 100 chief executive officers rose from $1.3 million (or 39 times the pay of an average worker) to $37.5 million (or more than 1,000 times the pay of an average worker) (2). Recent trends in wealth inequality have been equally noteworthy. The net worth of families in the top decile rose by 69 percent, to $833,600 in 2001, from $493,400 in 1998. By contrast over the same period, the net worth of families in the lowest fifth of income earners rose 24 percent, to $7,900. The median accumulated wealth of families in the top 10 percent of the income distribution was 12 times that of lower-middle-income families through much of the 1990s, but in 2001, the median net worth of the top earners was about 22 times as great (3).

Inequalities in health: definitions, concepts, and theories

This study assessed the contextual and individual effects of social trust on health. Methods consisted of a multilevel regression analysis of self-rated poor health among 21,456 individuals nested...

Maternal stature is an important determinant of intrauterine growth restriction¹ and low birth weight,² especially in developing countries. Low birth weight and intrauterine growth restriction are predictors of subsequent mortality and growth failure.³ Because attained height reflects the health stock accumulated through social and environmental exposures during early childhood,^4,5 maternal stature is a simple, stable, and useful marker for assessing intergenerational linkages in health. Maternal stature has been shown to predict offspring outcomes before or immediately after birth.⁶ However, evidence for whether risks associated with shorter maternal stature have a lasting influence on the offspring's health during infancy and childhood is limited, or is restricted to small nonrepresentative samples, and inconclusive. In a large, nationally representative data set from India, an inverse association between maternal stature and both child mortality and growth failure was observed.⁷ It remains unclear the extent to which this association is present across a wider range of countries. Using the largest available, nationally representative, and comparable sample from 109 surveys in 54 low- to middle-income countries, with objective measurements of maternal stature and offspring anthropometry, we investigated the potential long-term effects of maternal stature on offspring mortality, underweight, stunting, and wasting in infancy and early childhood.