Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in reducing Infant Mortality in India. The study will help the government in deciding its future course of action regarding the infant mortality rate (IMR) reduction in India.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper adopts the interrupted time series analysis (ITSA) approach with a control group to study the role of NRHM in reducing the IMR in India. The authors examined infant mortality in rural areas of India for the level and trend change before and after the implementation of NRHM. The authors then applied a suitable ARMA model to estimate the coefficients of the regression model. From the estimated results, the study predicts the counterfactuals for both the rural IMR and urban IMR and plots the results.
Findings
The study found the evidence supporting the hypotheses that the NRHM has led to a reduction in the difference between urban IMR and rural IMR. The research shows that the rural IMR declined at steeper rates in the post-NRHM period (2005–2015).
Originality/value
None of the existing studies analyses the impact of a social scheme like NRHM on the reduction of IMR in India by applying the ITSA. The study is unique as it estimates the counterfactuals and plots the results which show the impact of NRHM on reducing IMR.
Female age at marriage in Uttar Pradesh is amongst the lowest in India. Previous studies on female age at marriage in an Indian context primarily focused on the individual level factors impacting female age at marriage. Community level factors that influence the female age at marriage in Uttar Pradesh were non-existent. In this study, the impact of community presence of mass media is studied using Hierarchical Linear Models. Thus using the data from NFHS-2, the study explores the within community presence of any forms of print, electronic or local mass media and its impact on female age at marriage in Uttar Pradesh. Total of 7175 currently married individual women were nested in 317 rural communities across Uttar Pradesh. Hierarchal linear modeling using SAS PROC MIXED was used in the study. The intra-class correlation of 0.13 indicates fair bit of clustering of female age at marriage within communities. Thirteen percent of the differences in female age at marriage are due to between community differences in Uttar Pradesh. Communities' exposure to any forms of mass media has a positive impact on female age at marriage in Uttar Pradesh.
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