Aijrhass15 513

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American International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

Available online at http://www.iasir.net

ISSN (Print): 2328-3734, ISSN (Online): 2328-3696, ISSN (CD-ROM): 2328-3688 AIJRHASS is a refereed, indexed, peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary and open access journal published by International Association of Scientific Innovation and Research (IASIR), USA (An Association Unifying the Sciences, Engineering, and Applied Research)

Interstate Disparity in Infant Mortality Rates and Its important Determinants in North East India Uttam Kumar Sikder Assistant Professor (Stage 3) Department of Economics & Politics Visva-Bharati Santiniketan, West Bengal,India Abstract: This paper examines the interstate disparity in infant mortality rate (IMR) and its important determinants in North-East India, which may reflect the ‘health statuses of North-East India as a whole. Basically, I consider IMR as the most important health indicator since it was taken as a proxy of life expectancy at the birth and also it have been taken as one of the import indicators of the construction of human development index by united national development programme (UNDP, 1995). Actually the NorthEast India becomes a separate identity in India due to its natural scenic beauty, beautiful reserve forests and also its cultural heritage. Except the state of Tripura, North-East India comprises of seven states, Known as ‘seven sister’. The proportion of scheduled tribe population is more than the national average (8.20%) for all states of North-East India. Not only that, except the state of Assam the percentage of ST population (12.4%) in North-East Indian states are higher than the rest of India, which varies from 31.8% to 89.1% (census, 2001). This ethnic characteristic of North-East Indian states needs special attention in the study of ‘health’ and ‘accesses to’ healthcare facilities in general and one of the important health indicators infant mortality rate in particulars. In this paper we tried to capture interstates disparity of IMR over time, during 2002-04 to 2007-08) and important determinants of IMR in North-East Indian states by using LSDV model. The LSDV results revealed that percentage of home delivery assisted by skilled health personnel and percentage of households with toilet facility in house are two important determinants in explaining IMR in North-East India. Keywords: Health, Infant Mortality Rate, North-East India, Correlation & Regression Analysis, Disparity of IMR and LSDV Model. I. Introduction The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), derived from the United Nation Millennium Declaration, Commit Countries to halving extreme income to vary and to achieving improvement in health by 2015. There of the eight MDG goals are health-related, calling for a two-thirds reduction in child mortality, a three quarters reduction in maternal mortality and a half to spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. India is far away from achieving the goal which is especially true for North East Indian states. The very important health indicator, infant mortality rate (IMR) which was taken a as proxy of life expectancy at the birth have been taken as one of the import indicators of the construction of human development index by united national development programme (UNDP, 1995). From the available sources of data (for example datebooks for PC; 22nd December, 2014) it is found that the IMR shown the fluctuating trend over period. The paper investigates the disparities and their selected determinants of IMR in North-East Indian states. Actually the North- East India becomes a separate world in India due to their natural scenaric beauty, beautiful reserve forests and also their culture heritage. Except the state of Tripura, North East India comprises seven states, Known as ‘seven sister’. The scheduled tribe population is more than national average (8.20%) for all states of north east India. Not only that except the state of Assam the percentage of ST population (12.4%) in North-East Indian states are higher than other India states which varies from 31.8% to 89.1% (census, 2001). This ethnic characteristic of North- East Indian states should paid special attention in study of ‘health’ and ‘accesses to health’ facilities in general and in particulars the infant mortality rate. The next section of this paper explains the review of available literature which is relevant of our study. II. Review of literature in brief Most countries of the world are reducing infant and child mortality too slowly to meet the Millennium Development Goal of a two-thirds reduction by 2015. Yet, some countries and regions have achieved impressive reductions, Kerala in India being one example. The paper by Masset, E. & White, H. examined the

AIJRHASS 15-513; © 2015, AIJRHASS All Rights Reserved

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