Chapter 10 Determinants and consequences of the mortality and health of infants and children

This chapter provides an overview of the literature pertaining to two central issues in population studies related to infant and child mortality; the first issue concerns the extent to which human fertility is affected by the existence of (and changes in) infant and child mortality, while the second issue is concerned with the determinants of infant and child mortality. The assumption that infant and child mortality is uncontrollable at the individual level may have a considerable impact on the way the response of fertility to mortality is estimated. To the extent that behavior can affect infant and child mortality, correlations between fertility and mortality may reflect underlying household preferences. Thus, disentangling the reasons that lie behind the correlation between fertility and offspring mortality requires that the mortality technology is understood. Some researchers, therefore, have attempted to recover exogenous components of mortality by estimating the technology of infant and child survival.