Environmental determinants of child mortality in Ethiopia: An application of survival analysis

This paper focuses on the environmental determinants of child mortality in Ethiopia. The data for this study were obtained from the demographic and health survey conducted in 2014. It specifically examines how child mortality is related to the household's environmental characteristics, such as mother's education, source of drinking water, type of toilet used, type of cooking fuels, antenatal visit and place of delivery. A survival analysis was used to analyze the determinants of child mortality. As expected the Kaplan-Meier estimation show that most of the deaths occurred at first birth day of life. As the result of this we employed Cox proportional hazard and weibull regression models to select factors affecting child mortality in Ethiopia. According to the Cox proportional hazard and weibull regression models, mothers' education, source of drinking water, type of toilet used, antenatal visit, place of delivery and type of cooking fuel were found to have significant impact on child mortality in Ethiopia. Child's mother who had primary, secondary and above educational level were lower risk of mortality than mothers' who had no education level and children whose parents use non-improved source of drinking water have less survival chance than those who use improved source of drinking water. With regard to source of cooking fuel, children born in households using high polluting fuels (fire woods and charcoal) as their main source of cooking fuel have higher mortality rates as compared to those using low polluting fuels (electricity). Children born in households with either flush toilets or pit latrines have lower mortality rate than those born in households without any toilet facility. Policies aimed at achieving the goal of reduced child mortality should be directed on improving the household’s environmental status if this goal is to be realized.