Socioeconomic, Gender and Geographic Inequality in Child Health in Sub-Saharan Africa

The income and non-income dimensions of inequalities are highest in Sub Saharan Africa among the world regions. Also these inequalities not only vary between the countries in Africa but also within the country with respect to gender, geographical areas, social and economic groups. Studies had shown that progress in MDGs indicators pertaining to child health in the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa is rather slow and skeptical on achieving many of the MDGs by the year 2015. However, these studies had looked at the indicators at aggregate without considering its level and progress across gender, region, social and economic groups. Fail to consider these domains will mask the real development and in achieving the MDGs. Keeping this in view, we examine the socioeconomic, gender and geographic inequalities in child health in the selected countries of Sub-Saharan Africa in a comparative perspective. Further, this study will also explore how these domains such as socioeconomic groups, gender and geographical location interact in producing inequality in these countries. The child health indicators such as under-five mortality, child nutrition, immunization and diarrhea illness will be considered for the analysis. We use different rounds of Demographic Health Surveys and employ multilevel models, inequality indices for data analysis.