Explaining the Rural-Urban Gap in Infant Mortality in India: Role of program factors

Infant mortality in rural areas of India is substantially higher than in urban areas. This study systematically assesses the role of maternal and child health (MCH) care related program factors in explaining the rural-urban gap in infant mortality during last two decades. Logistic regression was used to analyze association between maternal and child health (MCH) care related program factors and infant mortality using data from the three rounds of National Family Health Survey. Relevant socio-economic variables are adjusted in Binary logistic regression. To understand the relative contribution of different co-variates into the rural-urban gap in infant mortality, extension of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique by Fairlie was applied. Most of the rural-urban gap in infant mortality can be explained by the distributions of the co-variates in rural and urban area. The two important MCH care related program factors viz. breastfeeding and knowledge of Oral Re-hydration Solution contributed to the narrowing the gap between rural and urban infant mortality. On the other hand, the share of women using modern contraceptive methods and percentage of fully vaccinated children in the community contributed to widen the gap. The biggest part of rural disadvantage in infant mortality is attributable to underlying disadvantage in ho