Recent trends in infant mortality in Kazakhstan

Annie Dude, University of Chicago

In the past decade in Kazakhstan, infant mortality rates have significantly increased over time. In order to understand the determinants of change, I have used a modification of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique for logit models to decompose the shifts in determinants of infant mortality in Kazakhstan into effects due to changes in coefficient effects and to changes in population composition. I examine covariates relating to ethnicity, geographic location, maternal education, household economic status, prenatal care, and characteristics of pregnancies. I find that the most significant changes arise from increased likelihood of infant death for non-ethnically Kazakh infants, changes in the quality and frequency of prenatal care, increasing riskiness of births spaced closely together, and decreasing contribution to the birth pool from wealthier households.