Socio-Economic Determinants of Diarrhoeal Morbidity among Children in Tanzania

Innocent Pantaleo and George Temba

African Journal of Economic Review, 2019, vol. 07, issue 2

Abstract: This paper uses a restricted sample of children under five years of age (0-4) of the 2009-2010 and 2015-2016 Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS) data to determine the socio-economic factors of diarrhoea morbidity among the sampled children. Using a t-test mean comparison and a logit model to estimate and analyze factors influencing the probability of occurrence of diarrhea, the paper finds that there is a significant difference in socioeconomic determinants between urban dwellers and rural dwellers as well as between male headed and female headed households. Child’s age and parents’ education level were found to be negatively associated with diarrhea morbidity. Contrary to expectations, age at first birth was found to be significant only in one dataset. It is further revealed that in preventing and reducing the incidence of diarrhoea among children, sanitation facilities is of importance than the supply of drinking water. The results imply that building the capacity and providing basic health and hygiene education to parents is more important for reducing diarrhoea morbidity among children. Specifically, promotion of both breastfeeding, and of personal hygiene, while preparing the supplementary foods for these children, seems to be the right way to control diarrhoea.

Keywords: Community/Rural/Urban Development; Health Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/292369/files/188382-478557-1-SM.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:afjecr:292369

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.292369

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in African Journal of Economic Review from African Journal of Economic Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().