Identifying Attributable Risk Factors of Age-Specific Mortality in Older Children, Adolescents and Youth

Ibraheem Ahmed , Universite Catholique de Louvain
Bruno Masquelier, Louvain University (UCL)

To date, a considerable breadth of literature has been produced pertaining to the estimation of mortality and its determinants in children below age five. This starkly contrasts with the body of work on mortality in older children and adolescents owing to comparably lower mortality at these ages. Consequentially, this divide has driven greater progress in reducing under-five mortality over recent decades, whilst mortality improvements in children over five have stagnated. These changes have shifted the burden of premature mortality into older age groups including older children and adolescents. In this study, we aim to provide new insights into over-five mortality by levying existing DHS survey data to determine the effects of mortality differentials. Our approach involved reconstructing birth histories across the most recent DHS available for each country, split by age group up to fifteen and censored to an observation window of within 10 years of the interview date. Survivorship was regressed against differentials, accounting for interactions and associated rate ratios calculated within each age group. Preliminary results revealed a decreasing contribution of Socio-Demographic Index (SDI) differentials on mortality as age increases beyond five years. However, this decline is uneven across age groups and differentials with some (e.g. maternal education) remaining significant into older ages whilst the effect of others (e.g. maternal age at birth) is eroded considerably beyond the youngest age groups. Further analysis will aim to understand the interplay between different covariates on mortality at older ages.

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 Presented in Session P5. Health, Mortality, and Ageing 1