Human Development and Maternal Mortality: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Maternal mortality is a serious development challenged faced by developing countries especial SubSaharan Africa(SSA) countries and has been marked as key development goal by both the Millennium
Development Goal(MDGS) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Human Development
Index(HDI) a measure of population wellbeing has been estimated to account for 80% to 82% of the
variations in maternal mortality among developing countries. The Human Development report for 2011
has categorized 35 countries in the sub-region as low income countries. The objective of this study is to
investigate the effect of maternal mortality on human development in SSA. The result of the J-statistics
confirms that the instruments used in our model are valid and there is no evidence of serial correlation.
The result of the Fixed Effect(FE) and the System GMM estimation showed a significant negative of
maternal mortality on human development measured by the HDI in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, a unit
increase in maternal mortality will reduce human development by 0.015 to 0.023points in the sub-region.