Gender Differentials and Determinants of Child Health in India

In this paper an attempt to study the spatial existence of gender bias in child health care has been made based on which the problematic region is identified and thus the various socio-economic determinants affecting child health on the problematic area is studied.
Uttar Pradesh records highest infant and child mortality with huge gender gap in mortality rates. General neglect of the girl child can be attributed to the traditional importance of the males in this patriarchic society. A Triangle Zone of high mortality differentials is identified which is called “a zone of survival disadvantage for girls” by some scholars. In spite of all the developmental efforts child mortality, underweighted children, prevalence of chronic and preventable diseases in study area remains to be significantly high. The regression analysis shows that education of the mother and the standard of living has a strong positive influence over child health. More educated mothers are more likely to have higher age at first birth and thus lesser number of births. Working mothers usually tend to have more vaccinated but result in underweighted children. However, social factors like religion, caste and also the place of residence do not seem to affect child health much.