Communicative actions, women's degree of social connectedness and child mortality in rural Bangladesh

Abstract

Child deaths are decreasing throughout South East Asia, yet the rate remains high and is a cause of considerable anguish. In Bangladesh, there is also a great deal of variation in child mortality between different regions. Reported in this paper is the analysis of a survey of 613 Bangladeshi women who live in six rural villages and have reported on their experience of child death. Factors obtained from an interview based questionnaire were investigated to ascertain their association with child death. Multilevel Poison regression models were developed to relate these factors to the number and proportion of child deaths to children ever born while allowing for variation between the villages. It was found that communicative action, especially women's power as the degree of social connectedness, is important in reducing child mortality. Also important in reducing child mortality is the level of women's education. No evidence could be found of sex preference when comparing male and female child deaths.