Effect of Mother's migration on early child mortality in Kenya

Abstract

This study mainly focus on the effect of migration on under-two mortality in Kenya and a model framework is adopted to capture the socioeconomic, environmental and bio- demographic characteristics- The data used was drawn from the 2003 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey to assess the effect of maternal migration on the survival chances of children under age two between 1998 and 2003.

Results show that under-two mortality is high among migrants compared to non- migrants and consistently higher among children of urban -rural migrants. Proportional hazards model estimates reveal that the survival chances of children of migrants persist after controlling for socio-economic characteristics. The study underscores the importance of mother's education, especially beyond secondary levels, to child survival, preceding and succeeding birth interval, mother's occupation and means of fecal disposal have significant differential effects on child survival irrespective of their migration status.

The inequitable and limited distribution of health and related development programs especially those aimed at improving health and survival in many rural areas raises the • question on whether rural mothers or parents can improve their children survival chances

by moving from one place to the other.