A Comparative Multilevel Analysis of Community Effects on Child Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa

Adébiyi Germain Boco, Université de Montréal
Simona Bignami, Université de Montréal

While researchers have devoted considerable attention to the impact of individual-level factors on child mortality, less is known about how community characteristics and institutions affect health outcomes for children, even though they have a prominent role in theoretical models of child mortality. Using data from the latest round of Demographic Health Surveys for all countries in sub-Saharan Africa that include community-level information, we systematically examine the impact of contextual factors on child mortality. Specifically, we use multilevel discrete-time event history analysis to assess the influence of community population size, average female education and access to medical facilities on the risk of dying before age 5. Our preliminary finding is that in all contexts the introduction of community-level controls significantly reduces the impact of individual-level factors on child mortality.