TABLE 4.

Nature of urbanization and implications for health care by region

Urban factors	Africa	Middle East and North Africa	Europe and Central Asia	Latin America	South Asia	East Asia
Rate of urban growth	High	Low	Low	Mod	High	High
Sprawl	Low	Mod	NA	Low	High	High
Decentralized governance	Low	Low	NA	Mod	Mod
Poverty	High	Low	Low	Low	Mod	Mod

Source: In any given category in the respective sources. “High” refers to the top third in any category, “Mod” refers to the middle third, and “Low” refers to the bottom third of their respective sources. The indicator “Rate of urban” was taken from the National Research Council;² “sprawl” was taken from Angel et al.;⁵ “Poverty” is a reflection of the rate of slum formation by region from Table 1, column 1; and “decentralization” is a relative measure that compares each of 50 countries against a common standard from Arzaghi and Henderson.³⁷

NA = data not available