On the Pattern of Risk of Child Death: From Observable to Unobservable

The level of infant and child mortality is taken as indicator of health condition and also be regarded as general indicator of development of society. Decline in mortality has been quite rapid in India, but the rate of infant and child mortality is still very high. Thus, primary concern is to further reduce the level of infant as well as child mortality by exploring the high risk group. In this paper, death under age five year is termed as child death i.e. the sum of infant and child mortality. In this paper we have tried to simulate the distribution of risk of child death (p) for all parity, which can not be observed directly. Since p is affected by many factors, so it seems more logical to consider the p as a random variable and have a distribution. Beta-binomial probability distribution is considered as a model for number of child death to women for fixed parity to estimate the risk of child death. The suitability of model is checked by using National Family Health Survey (NFHS-III, 2005-06) for the two states of north India i.e. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.