More resources better health? A cross-national perspective

This study is an attempt to examine the relative importance of health care resources in predicting infant mortality within industrialized, developing, and underdeveloped countries. The analyses were based on the data of 117 countries. Findings from this study suggest that health resources as a whole do not make a significant contribution to accounting for the variance of infant mortality rates over and above the variance accounted for by socioeconomic resources only. The contribution of health resources to the health of the population as a whole is really rather small in comparison to the role of socioeconomic resources.