Dynamic Relationship between Fertility and Child Mortality for Indian States

Important demographic regularities between fertility and child mortality rates in Indian states are strong positive correlation and roughly parallel decline over time. This suggests developing a dynamic relationship between them by using National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data. Vector Auto regressions (VAR) with exogenous variable methodology are employed to estimate their relationship. Our model estimated a fertility equation in which child mortality rate is an endogenous variable in simultaneous equations system and vice versa. The model yields implication for the number of children born per thousand reproductive periods of women and died before reaching age five per thousand live births during a particular period of time. In order to evaluate the accuracy of estimates, we compare our estimates with observed estimates which provide consistent result.