Infant Mortality in Uganda: Determinants, Trends and the Millennium Development Goals

Unusually for an African economy, Uganda's growth has been rapid and sustained for an extended period of time. Further, this growth has clearly translated into substantial declines in poverty for all socioeconomic groups and in all regions of the country. Despite this, there is concern in the country that other indicators of well-being are not improving at the same rate as incomes. This paper studies one such indicator, infant mortality. We use three rounds of the Uganda Demographic and Health Surveys to construct a national time series for infant mortality over a long period of time, 1974--99. We also use these survey data to model the determinants of infant mortality and, on the basis of those results, to examine the likelihood that Uganda will meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving infant mortality by 2015. Key results of the paper include: (1) household assets and infant mortality are significantly negatively correlated, but the correlation is small, so even if Uganda's rapid growth were to continue for another decade, the impact on infant mortality rate (IMR) will be small up to 2015; (2) after controlling for individual, household and community determinants, there is no discernable time trend (up or down) in infant mortality in Uganda; (3) observed improvements in mothers' primary school graduation rates will have a significant impact on IMRs. Plausibly attainable improvements in mothers' secondary graduation rates will have a lesser impact, largely because the improvements in graduation rates are not so great as at the primary level; (4) improvements in vaccinations for childhood diseases and in general health care services can also cause significant reductions in IMRs and (5) nevertheless, even under optimistic assumptions about improvements in health care and education, Uganda will not achieve the MDG for infant mortality. Copyright 2008 The author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for the Study of African Economies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.