Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to identify and quantify the relative importance of various socioeconomic factors and maternal care practices which may have significant role in determining child mortality at different level of child ages in Pakistan.

Design/methodology/approach: This paper examines the role of household, demographic and environment factors as determinants of early children mortality in Pakistan. A number of individual, household and local characteristics are related to the probability of child mortality. This study employed a sequential model which is based on a sequence of binary choice models for the conditional probability of choosing a higher response category.

Findings: This study identifies that mother feeding protects children from early exposure to diseases and ill-health in different ways. It also appeared that mother's education is strongly related to neonatal mortality, infant mortality as well as child mortality not only through the improved child caring practices but also through other proximate determinants such as prenatal care, income and environmental contamination.

Research limitations/implications: Social policies attempting to promote early initiation of mother feeding and utilization of prenatal care could make major contribution to the reduction of under five years mortality in Pakistan

Practical implications: Health care intervention programmes should focus on illiterate mothers whose children have all the cumulative risks due to poor health care utilization.

Originality/value: This could be the first ever effort in describing child mortality status with the help of sequential probit technique for Pakistan.