Infant Mortality in the Indian State: Trends, Patterns and Instability since 2001-02

Abstract

Health is one of the major component of development. Health not only promotes social development but also enhances economic development of a nation. Health and education are the two important aspect of human capital formation. Health can be considered both input and output of development. After the constant effort of the United Nations through adopting two important vision named Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals, study of health sector with a special focus on child mortality is necessary. On this background, this paper aims to analyse the trend, pattern and instability of the growth rate in India and it’s different states for the time period 2001-02 to 2016-17. Taking data from different bulletins of Sample Registration System the study analyses the trend by fitting simple trend line and to measure the growth rate with structural break CUSUM and CUSUMSQ tests are conducted. Using Poirier’s Spline Function Approach the growth rate for different regimes are calculated and the instability was measured by using Cuddy Della Valle index. The study concludes that the decline in mortality rate is slow in India with variations across states. The rate is found to be stable with Manipur and Kerala being the most successful states in terms of growth and instability whereas Madhya Pradesh is the least performing state. The study prescribes for a more articulated policy framework.