Age at First Birth, Health Inputs and Child Mortality: Recent Evidence from Bangladesh

This paper examines the relationship between early childbearing and child mortality in Bangladesh and argues that high child mortality among adolescent mothers could in part be explained in terms of little/no use of available health inputs. In doing so, the present paper determines mother's age at birth, hospital delivery, child vaccination and child mortality as correlated processes, after taking account of the parents/mother specific unobserved heterogeneity. Our estimation results show that children born to older mothers, those delivered in hospitals and those vaccinated against major childhood diseases have better chances of survival. These results also indicate the significant potential for lowering mortality by inducing high-risk adolescent women to delay child birth and make use of available health inputs.