Determinants of Demand For Child Health

Abstract

With children being an important component of future human capital, child mortality remains a major public health concern globally. This therefore led to the declaration of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 by the United Nations (UN). According to UN (2015a), the target was to decrease under-five mortality rate by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. This has now been replaced by the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3.2, which according to the UN (2015b), aims to reduce under-five mortality rate to 25 deaths per 1,000 live births by 2030 among others. Thus, the global under-five mortality rate of 43 deaths per 1000 live births according to UN (2015a) is far above the SDG 3.2 target. The situation is worse in sub-Saharan Africa which has the highest child mortality rate of 86 deaths per 1000 live births (UN, 2015a). Further in Ghana, recent report from the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS) states the under-five mortality rate to be 60 deaths per 1000 live births (Ghana Statistical Service [GSS], Ghana Health Service [GHS] and ICF International, 2015a) and hence if the trend should continue, it will be difficult to achieve SDG 3.2 by 2030. The reason for the above can be blamed on inadequate demand for child health inputs. This study therefore investigated the determinants of demand for child health inputs (healthcare provider, immunisation, Insecticide Treated Net (ITN), deworming, vitamin A, iron and iodine)) in Ghana using data from the 2014 GDHS and employing the binary probit, multinomial probit and the ordered probit estimation techniques. The study therefore found that, the region of residence, type of residence (rural or urban), religion, ethnicity, mother s education, mother s health insurance, marital status of mother, mother s employment, permission, distance and money to seek medical care by mother, partner s education, sex of the child, age of the child, birth order of the child, mother s age, gender and age of the household head, and household wealth are the determinants of demand for