Determinants of Under-Five Mortality: Evidence from Zambia

Abstract

Background: Globally, there are concerted efforts to reduce infant and child mortality. In order to achieve this, efforts are concentrated at identifying cost-effective strategies as many international agencies have advocated for more resources to be directed to the health sector. One way of doing this is to identify and rank-order the socioeconomic factors that affect under-five mortality. This will help in prioritizing factors that need to be manipulated for effective health interventions in the face of competing scarce resources.Methods: We utilised cross-sectional data from the Zambia Demographic and Health Survey (2013-14). The logit regression was employed to empirically investigate the determinants of under-five mortality.Results: The key findings of the multivariate results indicate that mother’s age at birth, child’s gender and number of children under-five, the level of wealth, mother’s level of education, and the region in which a mother resides; smoking cigarettes and the use of contraception are significant determinants of under-five mortality in Zambia.Conclusion: To avert more under-five deaths and enhance child survival, efforts by the Zambian government with the support from other stakeholders in the health sector must be aimed at factors identified by the study.

Keywords: Under-five mortality, Empirical investigation, Logit regression, Child survival, Zambia.