No James I underlined the fact that we don't have good statistics for the trend among those in the bottom quintiles in the poor countries of child mortality--arguably as the Bank itself has noted the best indictor of the responsivenss of a health care system. I didn't present any good evidence to infer what those trends have been; nor did you as your data was--as you again indicate--of averages (though after having read Dreze and Sen's statistical overview of India, I am persuaded that you are probably right that for the above indicators there has been absolute progress in terms of the above indicators from the bottom up, though it has gone with an accentuation of inequalities--perhaps regional first and foremost).
Thandika Mkwandire and his collobarators at CODESRIA have prepared a multivolume study of the effects of structural adjustment programmes on Africa. It is probably worth a serious reading. I wonder if Patrick Bond has studied (or perhaps contributed) to the project. At least for Africa and Latin America overall, it seems that at the least the rate of bottom up progress has slowed down over the last 25 years.
But I welcome any data (quantitative and qualitative) and analysis of the reliability of the measures and the time series (about which if I remember correctly Jim O Connor raised some sharp questions if not in this thread, then elsewhere).
Rakesh