Half a million children died last year because families in the developing world are sliding back into severe poverty after 40 years of progress.
According to the Unicef report, more than 14 million children under 5 years old died in 1987. The estimate that at least half a million of those deaths could be attributed to "the slowing down of the development process in the 1980's" was based on trends in 16 third-world countries where there has been "a definite slowing down" in the 1980's in the rate of decline in child mortality.