Explaining the diminishing of Muslim advantage in child survival in India

Abstract

Religion is one of the key instrumental social institutions in determining child health and mortality. Muslim advantage in child survival in India has been widely reported. Recent India’s National Family Health Survey (NFHS) shows that the gap between Hindu–Muslim childhood mortality rates is shrinking—reversing decades of child survival advantage for Muslims. This study examines the factors linked to the diminishing of Muslim advantage in childhood survival and attempts to uncover the mechanisms accounting for the convergence using the characteristics hypothesis of Goldscheider (Population, modernization, and social structure Little, Brown & Co; 1971) and the analytical framework of Guillot and Allendorf (Genus 66(2), 2010). We have analyzed a pooled sample of 23,47,245 all live births and 428,541 of last live births from four rounds of NFHS (1992–2016). Kaplan–Meier survival plots over time by religion confirm convergence in Hindu–Muslim child survival probabilities. The Pyatt decomposition model reveals that the gap in Hindu–Muslim childhood mortality is diminishing due to a decline in within-Hindu inequality. Cox proportional hazard regression model shows that improvement in household and maternal socioeconomic factors has contributed to Hindu children catching up with Muslims—leading to a convergence in Hindu–Muslim childhood survival probabilities. Conditional β-convergence regression model also suggests the convergence in socio-economic status and maternal health care is driving the convergence in child survival of Hindus and Muslims across Indian states.