Predictors of Age-Specific Childhood Mortality in India

Like many other developing nations, the age-specific mortality vary across regions and decline at different pace for India. Using a multinomial logit model, this study analyses the predictors for neonatal, post-neonatal, infant and under-five mortality. Mother’s height, age of mother at first birth, dietary pattern of the mother and education of parents are significant predictors for all the age-specific mortality. Equally important are access and usage of appropriate health inputs like tetanus shots, regular consumption of iron tablets and ante-natal visits.Compared to other age-specific mortality, neonatal mortality has the largest number of predictors that are statistically significant. Girls of higher birth order survive more during the first month than boys and reversal is true where later born boys have survival advantage after the first month. This highlights the biological advantage of girl-child survival only up to the first month and son-preference seems to create a disadvantage for girl child survival at later age-groups. Keeping all other factors constant, domestic violence is also an important predictor for neonatal mortality. .