AccScience Publishing / IJPS / Volume 3 / Issue 2 / DOI: 10.18063/ijps.v3i2.330
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Multilevel analysis of infant mortality and its risk factors in South Africa

Samuel Abera Zewdie1* Vissého Adjiwanou2
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1 Ethiopian Development Research Institute, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
2 Centre for Actuarial Research, University of Cape Town
IJPS 2017, 3(2), 43–56; https://doi.org/10.18063/ijps.v3i2.330
© Invalid date by the Authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

The study analyzed infant mortality and its risk factors in South Africa. It aimed to examine infant mortality in the country by taking into account the hierarchical nature of the problem and investigate the with-in country variation in modeling. In addition to the usual individual level risk factors of infant mortality, living standard, mother’s education, and income inequality were defined at municipal level, while HIV prevalence was fixed at province level. A multilevel logistic regression model was then fitted with Bayesian MCMC parameter estimation procedure using the 2011 South African census data. Most of the demographic and socioeconomic variables identified at individual level were found significant. More remarkably, the result indicated that communities with better living standard and women's education were associated with lower infant mortality rates, while higher income inequality and HIV prevalence in the communities were associated higher levels of infant mortality. The changes in infants’ odds of death were estimated to be 26%, -21%, 13% and 8% respectively for HIV, women’s education, income inequality and level of the living standard. In addition, unobservable municipal and province level random effects significantly affected the level of infant mortality rates. 

Keywords
Infant mortality
multilevel
poverty
inequality
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International Journal of Population Studies, Electronic ISSN: 2424-8606 Print ISSN: 2424-8150, Published by AccScience Publishing