MEASURING EXCESS RISK OF CHILD-MORTALITY - AN EXPLORATION OF DHS-I FOR BURUNDI, UGANDA AND ZIMBABWE

This paper proposes a new method of measuring excess risk of child mor tality in cross-sectional surveys, which is applied to DHS I data for Burundi, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The expected child mortality experience is estimated for each mother on the basis of child's age, mother's age at child's birth and her parity, and compared with her observed exper ience. Mothers who exceed their expected child mortality experience an d also had more than one child die are considered to have excess child mortality. Zimbabwe had the greatest concentration of child deaths as measured by a simple ratio of mothers to deaths, but when observed ex perience was compared with expected it had less than half as many exce ss deaths as Uganda and Burundi. In all three countries mother's educa tion had a strong negative association with the risk of excess child m ortality, and in Zimbabwe and Burundi there were significant regional differences.