Socioeconomic Conditions and Infant Mortality: The Recent Experience of Francophone Africa

This chapter highlights the impact of socioeconomic conditions on infant mortality trends, based on the experience of 18 French-speaking African countries over the past 30 years. We use a mix of classification, decomposition, and regression methods to highlight convergences and divergences between countries. The analyses show steep declines in five countries (Congo, DRC, Burundi, Central African Republic, Niger, and Mali). For most (14 out of 18) countries, the analyses also show a narrowing of the rural-urban gap that is unfortunately due to slow declines or a rise in the risk of mortality in urban areas. Elsewhere, this gap remains steady. Decomposition analyses underscore the role of general improvements in health services and infrastructure, which appear as the main driver of change.