Does Father’s Education Make a Difference on Child Mortality? Result from Benin DHS Data Using Conditional Logit Discrete-Time Model

Abstract

For various reasons, parents’ education is thought to contribute to their children’s health and survival. Evidence from most studies in developing countries suggests that the mother’s education is more strongly associated with child mortality than the father’s education. This study examines the effect of the father’s education on child mortality by taking into account the mother’s education, and explores whether there is an alteration of this effect when community-level factors are controlled. Using standard logit discrete-time modelLogit discrete-time model, and conditional logit discrete-time model which controls for community-level factors, based on the demographic and health survey of 2006 in Benin, we found that children with both educated father and mother have a low probability of dying before age five compared to children with uneducated parents. However, the advantage of the child survival with educated parents has disappeared in urban areas while it remains strongly significant in rural areas, suggesting that characteristics of the community of residence are not to be ignored in this relation. Further research is needed to confirm our findings using variables at community level.