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There is still considerable uncertainty about how reproductive factors affect child mortality. This study, based on Demographic and Health Survey data from 28 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, shows that mortality is highest for firstborn children with very young mothers. Other children with young mothers, or of high birth order, also experience high mortality. Net of maternal age and birth order, a short preceding birth interval is associated with above average mortality. These patterns change, however, if time-invariant unobserved mother-level characteristics of importance for both mortality and fertility are controlled for in a multilevel-multiprocess model. Most importantly, there are smaller advantages associated with longer birth intervals and being older at first birth. The implications of alternative reproductive 'strategies' are discussed, taking into account that if the mother is older at birth, the child will also be born in a later calendar year, when mortality may be lower [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The probability distribution of parity-specific closed birth intervals in a heterogeneous population of women is obtained from Biswas' (1980) concept of gradually decreasing fecundabilities. The distribution of parity-specific last closed birth intervals and its moments of various orders are derived for a heterogeneous female population. Simulations are used to compare with models for a homogeneous female population with constant fecundability. The consideration of heterogeneity allows a better fit for empirical closed birth intervals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brass's method for estimating child mortality is based on an ingeniously simplified model. However, it frequently leads to values of q(x) that are not consistent with each other. This is most obvious for estimates of q(1). This paper examines the extent to which such inconsistencies are caused by simplifications in the model. Three assumptions are relaxed by adjusting for differences in infant mortality by birth order, taking account of annual fluctuations in mortality, and using a different age pattern of fertility for each cohort. These adjustments are applied to data from the 1974 Bangladesh Retrospective Survey of Fertility and Mortality and the 1975 Bangladesh Fertility Survey in which additional data from the Cholera Research Laboratory are used. The resulting estimates are more consistent both internally and with estimates from other surveys and by other procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]