Spatial-temporal change in infant mortality and its determinants in Bihar, India

It is well known that Bihar is one of the demographic backward state having relatively high rates of poverty and malnutrition, and this has been suggested as the reason for the high fertility and infant mortality observed across the district. However, the study attempt to examine spatial-temporal change in infant mortality and its determinants in Bihar. The district level estimates of IMR manifests that all districts have still high infant mortality. The infant mortality is higher in rural areas than that of urban areas over the period. Similar differences are observed across the educational groups. Infant mortality also varied largely across the economic groups, i.e. the poorest has higher IMR than richest. All most all background characteristics have experienced decline in IMR, while only schedule caste has experienced increased in IMR. The Cox proportional hazard risk is used to understand the significant predictors of IMR. Results evidenced that once again socio-economic variables such as education of mother and household economic status emerged as key predictors in case risk of infant mortality.