ArticleRoyal Society open science2016
Parental investment in child health in sub-Saharan Africa: a cross-national study of health-seeking behaviour.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Understanding influences of care-seeking behaviours for diarrhoeal illnesses: a qualitative meta-synthesis.BMJ open · 2026Pooled it
- Global trends and geographic variations of hypertension in childhood and adolescence 1990-2021: a systematic analysis of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021.Clinical hypertension · 2026Article
- Factors Associated with Being on Track for Early Childhood Development in Kinshasa: A Community-Based Cross-Sectional Study.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- When parental care hurts: extended parental care and the evolution of overparenting.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2025Review
- Trends and inequalities in oral rehydration therapy and continued feeding for children under five with diarrhoea in Sierra Leone.Tropical medicine and health · 2024Article
- Article
- Housing and health outcomes: evidence on child morbidities from six Sub-Saharan African countries.BMC pediatrics · 2023Article
- Paternal investment, stepfather presence and early child development and growth among Serbian Roma.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- Child Wantedness and Low Weight at Birth: Differential Parental Investment among Roma.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Health care utilization for common childhood illnesses in rural parts of Ethiopia: evidence from the 2016 Ethiopian demographic and health survey.BMC public health · 2019Article
- Why so many Agta boys? Explaining 'extreme' sex ratios in Philippine foragers.Evolutionary human sciences · 2019Article
- Socioeconomic Predictors of Intestinal Parasitic Infections Among Under-Five Children in Rural Dembiya, Northwest Ethiopia: A Community-Based Cross-sectional Study.Environmental health insights · 2019Article
- Demographic, Socioeconomic, and Geographic Factors Leading to Severe Malaria and Delayed Care Seeking in Ugandan Children: A Case-Control Study.The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene · 2017Article
- Beyond causes of death: The social determinants of mortality among children aged 1-59 months in Nigeria from 2009 to 2013.PloS one · 2017Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
Parents face trade-offs between investing in child health and other fitness enhancing activities. In humans, parental investment theory has mostly been examined through the analysis of differential child outcomes, with less emphasis on the actions parents take to further a particular offspring's condition. Here, we make use of household data on health-seeking for children in a high mortality context where such behaviours are crucial for offspring survival. Using Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from 17 sub-Saharan African countries, we examine whether maternal factors (age, health, marital status) and child factors (birth order, health, sex, age) independently influence parental investment in health-seeking behaviours: two preventative behaviours (malaria net use and immunization) and two curative ones (treating fever and diarrhoea). Results indicate that children with lower birth order, older mothers and mothers with better health status have higher odds of investment. The effects of a child's sex and health status and whether the mother is polygynously married vary depending on the type of health-seeking behaviour (preventative versus curative). We discuss how these results square with predictions from parental investment theory pertaining to the state of mothers and children, and reflect on some potential mechanisms and directions for future research.
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