Estimation of Levels and Trends of Under-Five Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Summary of Birth Histories of Currently Married Women

Abstract

This present study has discussed the levels and trends of under-five mortality in sub-Sahara Africa. This study aims to estimate under-five mortality using Summary of Birth Histories (SBH) of currently married women which may provide valuable information for assessing the interventions and measures already in place to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (especially goal 3). The Trussell variant which is the modified version of the Brass model was adopted to derive under-five mortality from SBH of currently married women. The result shows that the index for under-five mortality ( ) implied by the north family of the Coale–Demeny model life tables ranges from 65.8 deaths per 1000 live births in Zambia (2018 ZDHS) to as high as 132.9 deaths per 1000 live births in Nigeria (2018 NDHS) respectively. The average estimate of under-five mortality for the countries is about 107.9 deaths per 1000 live births for currently married women and 108.4 deaths per 1000 live births for the entire women in the surveys. While the average probability of a newborn baby surviving to age 5 is about 0.8921 for currently married women that of the entire women is about 0.8915.