Analysis of Impact of Female Education and Labour Force Participation on Disparities in Under-Five Mortality Rate among Selected African Countries

Sabina Ampon-Wireko ,Linda Hyde-Quartey ,Priscilla Adomako Gyasi ,Yinghua Chen

doi:10.7176/ppar/9-3-14

Abstract

The role of female education is crucial for the development of any country, especially for the third-world countries. The objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of female education and female labour force participation disparities serving as key influential factors of under-five mortality among some selected developing countries in Africa. Annual panel data sets of the selected countries from the year 2000 to 2017 were used for the study. The panel random effect model was used to estimate the polled data for the selected countries. Moreover, the time series multiple regression analysis was used to estimate the predictors of the disparities of under-five mortalities in the individual countries. The study also examined the major causes of the disparities in under-five mortality among the selected countries by emphasizing on female education as major predator of the disparities inter-alia some key control variables such as gross domestic product(GDP) per capita, educational expenditure, female labour force participation, and gross fixed capital. The paper concludes that female primary school enrolment and labour force participation are statistically significant and predominately strong predators of the disparities in the rate of under-five mortality among the selected countries. The study further recommends that health policies to reduce child mortality should be designed inter-alia with educational policies since education makes an individual more conscious about their health. Keywords: Female education; Under-five mortality; Female labour force participation, Education expenditure, Economic growth, Panel analysis. DOI : 10.7176/PPAR/9-3-14 Publication date :March 31 st 2019

Highlights

Child death has remained a major health challenge in spite of the remarkable efforts made to improve the survival rate of children under-five children
The study examined the major causes of the disparities in under-five mortality among African counties by emphasizing on female education as key predator of the disparities inter-alia some key control variables such as GDP per Capita, educational expenditure, female labour force participation, and gross fixed capital
The results revealed that, female primary school enrolment, female labour force participation, GDP per capita as proxy for economic growth were statistically significant and predominately strong predators of the disparities in the rate of under-five mortality among the countries

Summary

Introduction

Child death has remained a major health challenge in spite of the remarkable efforts made to improve the survival rate of children under-five children. For instance in 2017, approximately 5.4 million deaths were recorded among children under five years worldwide while about 50% of these child deaths occurred in Africa (Unicef, 2018) This has created a lot of fear and panic burdening policy makers, mothers, and parents among other stakeholders. This has attracted several researchers from all parts of the World to conduct advanced studies to improve child survival especially in Africa for the decades. There is still disparities among the African countries classified as the highest in terms of child mortality in the world This is partly attributed to difference in economic growth, educational attainment, literacy rates and health expenditure policies in these countries (Braveman et al, 2005).

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