Social Inequality and Institutional Deliveries

Abstract

Women’s maternal health is an important concern all over the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia; this includes India, the world’s second most populous country. Despite the implementation of various programmes by the government, India has a large number of women dying because of pregnancy-related problems. Tracking the progress of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)-5 which specifically aim to reduce the maternal mortality ratio (MMR), one sees that India is lagging in achieving the required reduction in maternal deaths. To be sure, institutional deliveries, one of the significant interventions to reduce maternal deaths, are being promoted significantly by initiating cash transfer schemes. However, this initiative has not achieved the desired results when one compares various socio-economic groups across India. This study analyses the degree of relative deprivation by using district-level household data to examine disparity in terms of achieving institutional deliveries among different socio-economic groups by using the relative deprivation index (RDI). Examining the severity of relative deprivation, we find that illiteracy and poor economic status are major contributors in creating inequality in achieving acceptable levels of institutional delivery.