Maternal Education and Child Mortality in Benin: Exploring the Context Effects

Fortuné Sossa, Université de Montréal
Mira Johri, Université de Montréal

Although relationship between maternal education and child mortality has been the subject of many studies, some studies have highlighted the uncertainty of this relationship by drawing attention to the importance of considering contextual characteristics and other sets of individual variables where they try to show that the education of other members of the community plays an important role, regardless of the mother's education. Taking into account the debate about the explanation of the effects of local context that gives importance to social interaction and instrumental mechanisms, very little research has focused on the possibility that some community institutions, such as the presence of market could have an impact on child survival. To advance our knowledge on these issues, we seek to establish whether other people's education and the presence of the market simultaneously are of considerable importance for child survival before age five in Benin.