The Puzzle of Muslim Advantage in Child Survival in India *The socio-economic status of Indian Muslims is, on average, considerably lower than that of upper caste Hindus. Muslims have higher fertility and shorter birth spacing and are a minority group that, it has been argued, have poorer access to public goods. They nevertheless exhibit substantially higher child survival rates, and have done for decades. This paper documents and analyses this seeming puzzle. The religion gap in survival is much larger than the gender gap but, in contrast to the gender gap, it has not received much political or academic attention. A decomposition of the survival differential reveals that some compositional effects favour Muslims but that, overall, differences in characteristics between the communities and especially the Muslim deficit in parental education predict a Hindu advantage. Alternative outcomes and specifications support our finding of a Muslim fixed effect that favours survival. The results of this study contribute to a recent literature that debates the importance of socioeconomic status (SES) in determining health and survival. They augment a growing literature on the role of religion or culture as encapsulating important unobservable behaviours or endowments that influence health, indeed, enough to reverse the SES gradient that is commonly observed. JEL Classification:O12, I12, J15, J16, J18Keywords: religion, caste, gender, child survival, anthropometrics, Hindu, Muslim, India A number of recent studies document socioeconomic status (SES) gradients in health and survival, across countries, across SES groups within country and within groups over time; for a survey see Cutler et al. (2006). Previous analyses of health inequalities along ethnic or religious lines tend to start out with a differential consistent with SES differences, as is the case, for example, with black-white differences in health in the United States. While it has been recognised that unhealthy behaviours like smoking or drinking may vary positively with SES (e.g. Rogers et al., 2000, p. 245), these are seldom large enough to alter the raw differential in favour of the lower-SES group. The case of Muslims in India is, in this respect, most unusual.By age five, the Muslim survival advantage over Hindus is as high as 2.31%-points, which is about 17% of baseline mortality risk amongst Hindus. Restricting the comparison to upper-caste Hindus, who enjoy unambiguously higher social status than Muslims, the differential is 1.30%-points, or about 10% of baseline mortality risk. Based on the total number of births recorded in 2000 (Census of India 2001), and on the proportions of high-and low-caste children born that year (obtained from representative survey data used in this paper), this differential translates into an annual 127,955(244,535) excess under-5 deaths amongst high-caste (low-caste) Hindus. To put the size of this differential in perspective, consider that the more widely discussed gender differential in under-5 mortality is 0.30%-poi...

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A sizeable economics literature explores the effect of prenatal shocks on later health or socioeconomic status. Work in other disciplines, following the seminal contribution of Trivers & Willard (1973), suggests that prenatal shocks may increase fetal loss and reduce the number of boys relative to girls at birth. This has been largely ignored in the economics literature and could affect the interpretation of estimates of the effect of prenatal shocks and that of gender in other applied economics contexts. This paper analyzes the effect of in utero exposure to a shock -civil conflict in Nepal -on (i) fetal loss, and (ii) gender and (iii) health at birth. Maternal fixed effects estimates show that exposed pregnancies are more likely to result in a miscarriage and in a female birth, but exposed newborns are neither smaller nor more subject to neonatal mortality.JEL codes: I10, J13, O15

Between 1996 and 2006, Nepal experienced violent civil conflict as a consequence of a Maoist insurgency, which many argue also brought about an increase in female empowerment. This paper exploits within and between-district variation in the intensity of violence to estimate the impact of conflict intensity on two key areas of the life of women in Nepal, namely education and marriage. Overall conflict intensity had a small, positive effect on female educational attainment, whereas abductions by Maoists had the reverse effect. Male schooling was not significantly affected by either conflict measure. Conflict intensity and Maoist abductions during school age both increased the probability of early female marriage, but exposure to conflict during marriageable age does not appear to have affected women's long-term marriage probability.

The Puzzle of Muslim Advantage in Child Survival in India *The socio-economic status of Indian Muslims is, on average, considerably lower than that of upper caste Hindus. Muslims have higher fertility and shorter birth spacing and are a minority group that, it has been argued, have poorer access to public goods. They nevertheless exhibit substantially higher child survival rates, and have done for decades. This paper documents and analyses this seeming puzzle. The religion gap in survival is much larger than the gender gap but, in contrast to the gender gap, it has not received much political or academic attention. A decomposition of the survival differential reveals that some compositional effects favour Muslims but that, overall, differences in characteristics between the communities and especially the Muslim deficit in parental education predict a Hindu advantage. Alternative outcomes and specifications support our finding of a Muslim fixed effect that favours survival. The results of this study contribute to a recent literature that debates the importance of socioeconomic status (SES) in determining health and survival. They augment a growing literature on the role of religion or culture as encapsulating important unobservable behaviours or endowments that influence health, indeed, enough to reverse the SES gradient that is commonly observed. JEL Classification:O12, I12, J15, J16, J18Keywords: religion, caste, gender, child survival, anthropometrics, Hindu, Muslim, India A number of recent studies document socioeconomic status (SES) gradients in health and survival, across countries, across SES groups within country and within groups over time; for a survey see Cutler et al. (2006). Previous analyses of health inequalities along ethnic or religious lines tend to start out with a differential consistent with SES differences, as is the case, for example, with black-white differences in health in the United States. While it has been recognised that unhealthy behaviours like smoking or drinking may vary positively with SES (e.g. Rogers et al., 2000, p. 245), these are seldom large enough to alter the raw differential in favour of the lower-SES group. The case of Muslims in India is, in this respect, most unusual.By age five, the Muslim survival advantage over Hindus is as high as 2.31%-points, which is about 17% of baseline mortality risk amongst Hindus. Restricting the comparison to upper-caste Hindus, who enjoy unambiguously higher social status than Muslims, the differential is 1.30%-points, or about 10% of baseline mortality risk. Based on the total number of births recorded in 2000 (Census of India 2001), and on the proportions of high-and low-caste children born that year (obtained from representative survey data used in this paper), this differential translates into an annual 127,955(244,535) excess under-5 deaths amongst high-caste (low-caste) Hindus. To put the size of this differential in perspective, consider that the more widely discussed gender differential in under-5 mortality is 0.30%-poi...