Socioeconomic and health effects on mortality declines in developing countries.

It has been argued that mortality declines in developing countries have not been associated with social and economic factors because of the diffusion from the developed countries to the developing countries of health and medical techniques. This paper examines the relationship between socioeconomic development and health and mortality declines in developing countries which are in two different stages of the demographic transition. A path model linking socioeconomic and health variables and mortality is developed and tested for early and late transition nations. The empirical findings indicated that the network of socioeconomic variables and their effects on mortality were much more significant in late transition countries than in early transition countries. While the impact of health services on crude death rates is large in the early transition nations, its impact declines considerably as countries reach a more transitionally 'mature' stage.