Under-five survival in Bangladesh: Can Household Decision-Making Autonomy alter the current scenario?

Bangladesh achieved remarkable success in issue of third and fourth agenda of Millennium Development Goals- empowering women and to reduce child mortality rates; though an infant mortality of 52 deaths per 1000 live births indicate still we have to work to do in this sector. Under-five mortality may be reduced through the combined effect of improvement in standards of living between environment and personal hygiene, existence of maternal and child welfare scheme, as well as prevention and treatment of disease in infancy. Empowering women on her way to achieve freedom on own and child health care improve the quality of health related outcome of whole family; hopefully can decline under-five mortality in Bangladesh. In this paper, impact of women’s household decision-making autonomy on under-five survival had been determined without any intermediate terms. Using the proportional hazards model on BDHS-2007 data, the household decision-making autonomy is found to be a significant differential of under-five survival even after controlling for high risk factors of child mortality along with duration of breastfeeding, maternal health care seeking behavior and socioeconomic status. This implies; empowering women can effectively make a rapid enhancement in child and mothers health strategies, along with decline in under-five mortality.