Modeling of Exclusive Breastfeeding and Mother Working Status with Recursive Bivariate Probit Model (Case Study in Surabaya City 2017)

There are special cases in Bivariate Probit model where one dependent variable becomes the regressor endogenous variable for the other dependent variable. Therefore, recursive bivariate model is used to solve this case. Exclusive breastfeeding is measured to identify its characteristics so that policies can be formulated to increase the rate of exclusive breastfeeding. The variable of mother working status is endogenous. Therefore, a recursive model is used to model this case. Mother's working status affects mother's exclusive breastfeeding. Mothers who do not work increase the chances of a mother being able to give exclusive breastfeeding. The greater the age of the first pregnancy of the mother, the less the chances of mothers to not work. A mother with more child has more chance to not working. A medium number of family member affect a chance for a mother to working. A mother who has last education at the Elementary School has a high chance of exclusively breastfeeding their babies. This may be related to the ability of mothers to work with mother's education. Early Initiation of Breastfeeding (EIB) affects the opportunity for mothers to exclusively breastfeed. It proves the importance of EIB shortly after the baby is born so that the baby does not confuse the nipple and the breastfeeding process becomes easy. A husband who has last education at Senior High School give a greater chance for the mother to exclusively breastfeed. Recursive Bivariate Probit models have smaller AIC values than Bivariate Probits, which are 522.226 and 526.414. This shows that the Recursive Bivariate Probit model is better at modeling cases of exclusive breastfeeding and the status of working mothers in Surabaya city than Bivariate Probit Model.