Experiences from cross-national analyses on mother and child health using relative and absolute variables to track health disparities

Monitoring socioeconomic disparities in health is a crucial public health activity since lowering these disparities is a key public health goal. There is disagreement over which inequality metric is more significant, and the particular measure employed may have an impact on the conclusions reached. Whether to employ absolute or relative metrics of inequality is the main topic of discussion. Our study intends to contribute to this discussion and formulate, based on empirical assessments, guidelines for tracking health disparities across a wide range of developing nations. The Demographic and Health Surveys provided wealth-group-specific information on prenatal and delivery care, vaccination coverage, and under-5 mortality for 43 countries. The relationship between relative and absolute poor-rich disparities in these outcomes and the total level of these outcomes was described using these data.We show that there exist mathematical ceilings on the possible values of the absolute and relative inequality measures. However, the degree of inequality is connected with the total level of the result, even in cases where these ceilings are not present. However, the trends that have been noticed are not required. There are nations with low relative inequality and low mortality rates. Additionally, absolute inequality varied at the majority of overall levels.Our research demonstrates that, when the total level of the result is considered, both absolute and relative inequality measures can be useful for tracking inequities. There are instructions on how to accomplish this. Furthermore, the data presented in this research can be utilised to assess mother and child health disparities in low- and middle-income nations.