Impact of Public Programmes and Household Income On Child Mortality in Rural Sudan

Abstract

This paper uses household data from Sudan to examine the factors which affect child mortality. Thus, the impact on child mortality of the education of the mother and the father, public health program provisions and household income per adult are examined. In examining the interaction between income and child mortality the former is instrumented on household assets, which are used as identifiers in the Two Stage Least Squares estimation of the mortality function. In Ordinary Least Squares estimates, parental education and income per adult are found to have a significantly negative impact on child mortality, and mother's education, in particular, is found to have a larger and more significant effect than that of the father. Public health Programmes are found to produce significant reductions in child mortality. However, Two Stage Least Squares estimates indicated that the most important factors influencing child mortality are the mother's age, household per capita income, area of residence and, to some extent, hospital services.


Eastern Africa Social Science Research Review (EASSRR) VOLUME XVI No. 1 January 2000, pp. 37-48