background and purpose: health indices, regarding to their role in the development of society, are one of the most important indices at national level. success of national development programs is largely dependent on the establishment of appropriate goals at the health sector, among which access to healthcare facilities is an essential requirement. the aim of this study was to examine the dispa...

Williamson (1965) argued that catching up countries experiencing strong national growth tend also to see a widening in regional disparities, whereas in more developed economies strong national growth and falling regional disparities could go hand in hand. We find some evidence of a trade-off between national growth and regional dispersion in the EU’s Cohesion countries, notably in Spain and Ire...

"Countries," nations, nation-states, and national economies are in fact collections of spaces (regions), each with its own society and its own economic, social, political and power structure. The degree to which these spaces are integrated into a unified national economic, social, political and administrative system varies a great deal from country to country, and these variations go a long way...

The process of development involves a significant change in the economic activities over different regions along with a change in the structure of the economy. The socioeconomic change does not take place uniformly in different areas and it is also different in rural and urban areas of same region. Regional disparities are caused by a number of factors that lead to misallocation, under utilizat...

extended abstract introduction hospitals are the most important and complex social units which are intended to protect the lives of people and to treat and improve them. with the passage of time and progress in science, hospitals have been equipped with more advanced technology and facilities. more active beds in hospitals are indications of specialized manpower, equipment and facilities for th...

BACKGROUND Among European countries, Italy is one of the countries where regional health disparities contribute substantially to socioeconomic health disparities. In this paper, we report on regional differences in self-reported poor health and explore possible determinants at the individual and regional levels in Italy. METHODS We use data from the "Indagine Multiscopo sulle Famiglie", a sur...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of the study was to investigate the trends and causes of regional disparities of infant mortality rate (IMR) in rural China from 1996 to 2008. DESIGN A population-based, longitudinal study. SETTING The national child mortality surveillance network. POPULATION Population of the 79 surveillance counties. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE IMR, leading causes of infant death and th...