UNU-WIDER Environmental Determinants of Child Mortality in Kenya

This paper focuses on the determinants of infant and child mortality in Kenya. It specifically examines how infant and child mortality is related to the household’s environmental and socio-economic characteristics, such as mother’s education, source of drinking water, sanitation facility, type of cooking fuels and access to electricity. A hazard rate framework is used to analyze the determinants of child mortality. Duration models are easily applicable to the problem of child mortality as this class of models straightforwardly accounts for problems like right-censoring, structural modeling and time varying covariates which traditional econometric techniques cannot handle adequately. A household’s environmental and socio-economic characteristics are found to have significant impact on child mortality. Policies aimed at achieving the goal of reduced child mortality should be directed on improving the household’s environmental and or socio-economic status if this goal is to be realized.