FADING BEFORE THEY BLOOM’: CHILD MORTALITY IN SRI LANKA IN HOUSEHOLDERS

Abstract

The future human capital of any country is “children”. Hence, every child in this world has a right to have a good quality life. Children are a valuable investment in a country. In 1990, 12.6 million child deaths have taken place but in 2016, it drops to 5.6 million. Basically, universal child mortality rate has declined by over half between 1990 and 2016 (Rodriguez 2016). This progress in child survival indicates the development of global health. However, at present, globally approximately 15,000 under five-year old deaths occur per day and 5.3 million annually. Majority occur in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Moreover, the Department of Census and Statistics (2016) highlighted that infant mortality or early childhood mortality is a measure of socioeconomic development of a country; also, it’s a good measure of the quality of life. Many rigorous studies on child mortality regarding household income and expenditure, household wealth and also socioeconomic determinants of child mortality have been conducted especially in the developing countries in Asian and African regions (Nyamuranga and Shin 2019), but limited scale in Sri Lanka