Adolescent and Young Adult Health Inequalities by Urbanicity and Wealth

Suzumi Yasutake, Johns Hopkins University
Michele Decker, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

We examine the relative well-being of three groups of female adolescents and young adults in low and middle income countries: 1) the urban poor; 2) the urban non-poor; and 3) those in rural areas. Our data are from 51 recent Demographic and Health Surveys. We compared six key outcomes (early marriage, contraceptive use, early sexual debut, no schooling and underweight and overweight) through logistic regression within countries and summarized the results via meta-analysis. Our findings suggest that female adolescents and young adults in rural areas remain disadvantaged relative to non-poor urban dwellers on all outcomes. Poor urban adolescents are also disadvantaged relative to the urban non-poor on all outcomes. With respect to underweight, we find that poor female adolescents and young adults from urban areas are disadvantaged relative to both their rural and their non-poor urban counterparts.