District Level Infant Mortality Rate: An Exposition of Small Area Estimation

The present study attempt to explore small area estimation techniques for estimation of Infant Mortality rate (IMR) at district level for the major state of India. Since many health data are unavailable at the district level, policymaker sometimes rely on state-level dataset to understand the health need at district level. District level data on births and deaths from Civil Registration System and Service Statistics are inadequate and not access able uniformly for all the districts. To meet the challenge for the need of district level indicators, the present study is an attempt to assess the data from the available sources and integrate them through small area estimation techniques to provide district level estimation infant mortality rate (IMR).The estimates of IMR by small area method provide robust result as evident from small gap from Sample Registration System (SRS) and National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) at state level. The concluding remark is small area estimation is good for estimating IMR at district level.