We document the impact of the AIDS crisis on non-AIDS-related health services in 14 sub-Saharan African countries. Using multiple waves of Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for each country, we examine antenatal care, birth deliveries, and rates of immunization for children born between 1988 and 2005. We find deterioration in nearly all these dimensions of health care over this period. The m...

BACKGROUND This study used data from recent Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to examine the impact of high parity on under-five and neonatal mortality. The analyses used various techniques to attempt eliminating selection issues, including stratification of analyses by mothers' completed fertility. METHODS We analyzed DHS datasets from 47 low- and middle-income countries. We only used dat...

We analyzed the role that health programs played in improving the nutritional status of children aged five years and younger in East Africa during a period when health policies aiming to reduce malnutrition were implemented. We used several waves of Demographic and Health Surveys over the 1992–2006 period for Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. Our results show that malnutrition rates fell sub...

This paper examines, theoretically and empirically, the impact of reproductive externalities on fertility behaviour in Kenya. We examine this issue by identifying structural forms of social interaction operating across individuals belonging to di¤erent ethnic groups on the number of children ever born. We use the 1998 Demographic and Health Survey data on 5994 women from Kenya to examine whethe...

In war-torn Afghanistan, rates of maternal mortality (460 per 100,000 live births) and neonatal mortality (25 per 1,000 live births) are among the highest in the world, according to the World Health Organization and to Demographic and Health Surveys. Women have limited access to maternal and newborn care services, linked to geographic barriers, security problems, and cultural concerns about wom...

This paper uses Demographic and Health Surveys data from 21 countries in sub-Saharan Africa to examine the use of maternal health services by teenagers. A comparison of maternal health care between teenagers and older women, based on bivariate analysis shows little variation in maternal health care by age. However, after controlling for the effect of background factors such as parity, premarita...

During a period of military conflict towards the end of the 1990s, Eritrea experienced a remarkable decline in fertility. This decline has been a concern to many Eritreans. An important issue of concern has been whether the decline is driven primarily by the recent border conflict with Ethiopia or by changes in other factors including delay in age at marriage, improvements in child survival and...

This paper investigates the effect of education on the timing of marriage among Kenyan women and the relative effects of education across generations of women. Data used is drawn from the 1998 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey. The Cox proportional hazard model and linear regression analysis are used to analyse the data. The results show that education has a statistically significant and stro...

Adolescent childbearing has undesirable consequences. Dropping out of school, high rates of abortion, maternal mortality and morbidity are noted consequences of adolescent pregnancy and childbearing. The objective of this study, which is based on the 2005 Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey data, is to analyze the levels, trends and differentials of adolescent motherhood in Ethiopia. A mult...

OBJECTIVE The Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) are a vital data resource for cross-country comparative analyses. This study is part of a set of analyses assessing the types of providers being used for reproductive and maternal health care across 57 countries. Here, we examine some of the challenges encountered using DHS data for this purpose, present the provider classification we used, and...