Infant Mortality Rate

Infant mortality rate has been improving in India for a considerable time now. From 2009 to 2018, India has improved the IMR from 50 to 32. This article aims to understand the underlying improvement in the IMR at the state level and establish whether there is convergence. For this exercise, the article uses health inequality measures like standard deviation, coeffi cient of variation, rate of improvement differences, β convergence and Gini coeffi cient. The fi ndings reveal that all states show improvement in IMR over 10 years, but the rate of improvement is varying amongst state and there is no convergence amongst the states. Small states and union territories improve the IMR at a higher rate compared to that of the national improvement rate.

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Over the last few decades, both fertility and mortality rates have been falling, but the decline of mortality was strong enough to offset the fall in fertility rates. The 2001 Census, however, gives a clear indication that India is passing through the last phase of fertility transition, moving towards moderate to low fertility. Fertility declines have not, however, been uniform across the country and the differential rates are mainly responsible for the differentials in population growth rates across states and union territories.

Infant/child mortality is not a simple function of the level of economic development, pace of economic growth or material prosperity. Proximate conditions having a direct bearing on infant and child mortality are such that they cannot be influenced through increases in income and purchasing power alone and are outside the market domain. The National Family Health Survey provides rich and variegated data which are useful for studying the early mortality in Orissa and provide a solid empirical foundation for further probing of certain questions such as accessibility and quality of a whole range of public goods and services which have a direct bearing on premature mortality.