Covariates of child mortality in Mali: Does the health-seeking behaviour of the mother matter?

This paper uses data from the 1995/96 Mali DHS survey to examine the import ance of a wide range of socioeconomic, behavioural and biodemographic facto rs in the determination of child mortality in Mall, with a special focus on maternal education and behaviour. The central hypothesis of the study is t hat advances in maternal education would contribute little to child surviva l in settings such as Mall's urban and rural communities where progress in educational attainment is not matched with improvements in other aspects of socioeconomic development such as economic growth, job creation, financial security and public health and medical resources. Units of analysis are ch ildren born in the past 5 years to DHS respondents (women aged 15-45) who w ere married at the time of the survey. The Cox proportional hazards regress ion technique has been used to estimate the net effects of variables includ ed as covariates. The findings indicate that the health-seeking behaviour o f the mother matters more than maternal education in explaining the observe d differences in infant and child mortality in Mall's urban and rural areas .