Dynamique de pauvreté et inégalité de la mortalité des enfants au Burkina Faso

Based on the demographic and health surveys of Burkina Faso of 1992-93 and 1998-99, present study proposes to analyse the importance and evolution of the inequality of child mortality, and the relations which prevail between the latter and poverty. Firstly, there is an opposite relation between the standard of living of the households, apprehended in terms of assets, and the child mortality, a result specified using the concentration curves and indices, indicating that an inequality of the infant and under-five mortality «pro-rich» prevails in Burkina Faso. In addition, the inequalities in terms of infant and under-five mortality are relatively similar. Secondly, between 1992-93 and 1998-99,the evolution of the values of the concentration indices – statistically significant –, suggests that the inequality of the infant and under-five mortality slightly declined. This result is, a priori, coherent with the fact that poverty has, on the whole, slightly decreased between 1992-93 and 1998-99. Thirdly, the child mortality rates vary considerably according to the areas – in 1998-99, the infant and under-five mortality rates are approximately twice higher in the majority of the rural areas,except North, compared to the capital, just like the disparities of evolution during years1990: (i) reduction in the capital and the rural area of North; (ii) quasi-stagnation in the rural areas of the East and the West; (iii) small increase in the area of the Center-South. Nevertheless, the evolution of the inequality of child mortality is not necessarily related to the dynamics of the level of the child mortality. For example, in the capital, the reduction of the level of the child mortality was associated with an increase in the inequality of mortality.Fourthly, in fact, the inequality of the infant and under-five mortality increased in areas where poverty increased, in fact in the capital. However, in all the other zones where the ratioand/or the intensity of the poverty of the households dropped, the inequality of child mortalitytended to stagnate or decline. This result is confirmed by the apprehension of the dynamics of the monetary deprivation, based on the surveys of 1994-95 and 1998. In addition, the inequality of mortality tended to increase in the zones where precisely the inequality was already relatively high, in particular the capital. (Full text in French)