Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burg. Oudlaan 50, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Demography. 2009 Nov;46(4):827-50. doi: 10.1353/dem.0.0074.
The rural-urban gap in infant mortality rates is explained by using a new decomposition method that permits identification of the contribution of unobserved heterogeneity at the household and the community level. Using Demographic and Health Survey data for six Francophone countries in Central and West sub-Saharan Africa, we find that differences in the distributions of factors that determine mortality--not differences in their effects--explain almost the entire gap. Higher infant mortality rates in rural areas mainly derive from the rural disadvantage in household characteristics, both observed and unobserved, which explain two-thirds of the gap. Among the observed characteristics, environmental factors--a safe source of drinking water, electricity, and quality of housing materials--are the most important contributors. Community characteristics explain less than one-quarter of the gap, with about two-thirds of this coming from community unobserved heterogeneity and one-third from the existence of a health facility within the community. The effect of disadvantageous environmental conditions--such as limited electricity and water supply--derives both from a lack of community-level infrastructure and from the inability of some households to exploit it when available. Policy needs to operate at both the community and household levels to correct such deficiencies.
利用一种新的分解方法，可以解释城乡婴儿死亡率差距，这种方法可以确定家庭和社区层面未观察到的异质性的贡献。使用来自撒哈拉以南非洲中部和西部 6 个法语国家的人口与健康调查数据，我们发现，决定死亡率的因素分布的差异（而不是其影响的差异）解释了几乎整个差距。农村地区较高的婴儿死亡率主要源于家庭特征方面的农村劣势，无论是可观察到的还是不可观察到的特征，这些特征解释了差距的三分之二。在可观察到的特征中，环境因素（安全的饮用水源、电力和住房材料质量）是最重要的贡献因素。社区特征仅解释了差距的四分之一以下，其中约三分之二来自社区层面的不可观察到的异质性，三分之一来自社区内存在卫生设施。不利的环境条件（如电力和供水有限）的影响既来自社区层面基础设施的缺乏，也来自一些家庭在有条件时无法利用它。政策需要在社区和家庭层面上同时运作，以纠正这些缺陷。
