Effects of Infant and Child Mortality on Subsequent Births in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: The Moderating Role of Armed Conflict

Mugisho-Munkwa Guerschom, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne

This study investigated the effect of infant or child mortality and its interaction with conflict exposure on fertility in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). I used the birth histories of 11878 married women from the 2007 and 2013/2014 Demographic and Health Surveys, as well as conflict data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Programme. A series of conditional frailty survival models were estimated. I found a high risk of conception within a given conception interval for women who have lost an index or non-index child within the interval and for those who have lost a non-index child before the start of the interval. These findings provide evidence for an immediate volitional replacement effect, that is, a deliberate or psychological effort to replace as soon as possible a deceased child, as well as a long-term replacement effect reflecting the desire to achieve an ideal family size. The immediate replacement effect was less pronounced during periods of intense conflict. This finding contributes to the existing literature on the relationship between conflict and fertility by indicating that stress caused by traumatic events during the conflict, or worry about the future, reduces the desire to immediately replace children who died during the conflict.

Keywords: Fertility, Linked data sets , Health and Morbidity, Population, Shocks and Pandemics

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