Can clean drinking water and sanitation reduce child mortality in Senegal?

The purpose of this paper is to measure the impact of clean drinking water, modern sanitation facilities and hygiene on child mortality rates in Senegal. Diarrhea-related morbidity is still fairly common among young children and this disease is mainly due to poor hygiene and environmental factors. Although extensive research has been done on the determinants of child mortality in Senegal, they were mainly descriptive studies that did not focus on a policy-related variable on which public policies could have a direct intervention. Using dummy dependent variable models, I find that drinking water source and sanitation facility are not individually statistically significant when controlled for other demographic factors. Nevertheless, modern sanitation facilities have a large impact in urban areas and increase the probability of child survival. Handwashing with soap is significant and also increases the probability of a child to survive. These results suggest that public health policies making soap available and promoting handwashing as well as personal hygiene can significantly improve child health in Senegal