Regional Inequality in Child Health Status in India: A Convergence Analysis

Child malnutrition and child mortality plague an excessively large number of children in India. This prevalence of high malnourished children puts the country slightly off target to achieve the child malnutrition-related millennium development goals. From 2005-to 06, around 46 percent of the children in India are found to suffer from the problem of being underweight. Moreover; there are substantial inter-state variations in the incidence of undernourished children. In 2007, the rate of under-5 mortality in India was 72. The country’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG) target for 2015 is 38. While our average annual rate of reduction in child mortality is only 2.9; it has to be 7.6 if the MDG is to be attained. Using the data generated by National Family Health Survey, Government of India, this paper attempts to examine the degree of regional inequality by considering the various measures of convergence.
We can also see that the under nutritional status and the infant mortality rate significantly converge over the period but the under-5 mortality is not.