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Factors Affecting to the Child Health in Urban India: A Comparative Study between Two Mega Cities

Author Affiliations

  • 1International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai – 400088, INDIA

Int. Res. J. Social Sci., Volume 4, Issue (5), Pages 43-51, May,14 (2015)

Abstract

Child health is the one of important indicator of development of the nation. It also indicates the demographic status of any country and illustrates the future of human resource capital potential of the nation. Three standard indices of physical health/ growth of children, proposed by WHO, are “Height-for-age (stunting), Weight-for-height (wasting) and Weight-for-age (underweight)”. Child health was started emphasised and majorly focused globally during ICPD 1994 with considering it as a co-domain of Maternal health and named as MCH (Maternal and Child health). In the present study, we try to investigate the label of child health status in two demographically important mega cities as Meerut and Chennai. The prime objective of the study is to examine the relationship between background characteristics of the city and the status of child health and its influencing significant factors. NFHS-3 data was used for analysis. To examine the differential health status of the child across slum and non-slum population, bi-variate technique execute while Chi-square test has been used to understand the significant of background characteristics on child health status. The results show that the stunting is higher for Meerut than Chennai, as a little less than double. This difference is not much greater for slum children (27.7, 45.8) compare to non-slum (25.7, 42.2) in both the cities Meerut and Chennai respectively. For wasted and underweight characteristics, Chennai has a greater contribution than Meerut, and subsequently it is higher for slum over non-slum population. Wasted difference gap between slum and non-slum is higher for Chennai compare to Meerut, that is, 10.4 points and 4.1 points respectively. As a part of policy implication, one should enhance the nutritional status of the child as well as mother breastfeeding must be encouraged.

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