Determinants of Time-to-Under-Five Mortality in Ethiopia: Comparison of Parametric Shared Frailty Models

This article describes how under-five mortality rate is one of the critical indicators of development of a country. This rate tells of children's access to basic health interventions such as vaccinations, medical treatment and adequate nutrition. This article proposes to identify the determinants of time to under-five mortality in Ethiopia based on the 2014 data taken from the Ethiopian Mini Demographic and Health Survey of women of the age group15-49 years. In this survival quantitative analysis, this article considers relevant socioeconomic, demographic variables and environmental factors. Various parameters shared among frailty models are employed to identify the determinants of Time-To-Under-Five Mortality of Ethiopia. The selection of the best-fit survival model is done by applying the Akaike information criterion (AIC). The AIC prevailed that the Weibull-gamma multivariable-shared frailty model is relatively the best-fit model. The estimation result of the Weibull-gamma multivariable-shared frailty model predicted that the major factors identified for under-five mortality in Ethiopia were mothers' educational level, mothers' age at first birth, place of residence, household size, sex of child born, preceding birth interval, economic status of family, place of delivery, marital status of family, and source of drinking water. The result implied that vast work is expected from governmental and non-governmental bodies to reduce the under-five mortality in the country by considering the identified factors.