Impact of the Security Crisis on Children's Health in Burkina Faso

Mamadou Traoré, Institut National de La Statistique et de La Démographie (INSD)
Bernard Dembele, INSD

Burkina Faso is confronted to terrorism for several years. In addition to the loss of lives, this impacts population health. We use child growth to seize the cumulative effect of the multiple traumas suffered. The multifactorial nature of infant growth makes it affected by such a profound shock. The assessment of insecurity uses datasets from demographic and health surveys. The last three passages are retained; that of 2010/2011, and 2020/2021 which frame the outbreak of the security crisis and that of 2003 to serve as counterfactual data. The dependent variable, the height-for-age z-score index, is related to the main independent variable, the residence in insecurity area. The explanatory factors of evolution have been determined by Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method. It reveals that the decrease in the prevalence is now less pronounced. Moreover, there is a notable change in the factors involved in the downward trend before and during the crisis. Before, it was the mother's weight status, her height, birth order and age of the child that drove the decline. During the crisis, child wasting entered into consideration. As a result, improving child health needs to be adapted by increasing the management of acute malnutrition to mitigate the shocks suffered.

Keywords: Decomposition analysis, Health and Morbidity, Children, Adolescents, and Youth, Population, Shocks and Pandemics

See extended abstract.