ARI Working Paper Series

This paper explores reverse causation effect of fertility on infant mortality using both time trend and cross-sectional data for India and states. Time series and panel data regression model estimates on macro level trend data, revealed an explicable reverse causation effect of fertility on the infant mortality decline during the recent decades. Kaplan Meier survival function and Cox proportional hazard model estimates indicated that the declining share of high risk births lowered overall infant mortality rate. Overall fertility reduction in conjunction with falling high parities and high risk births are prominent reverse causational determinants of infant mortality reduction during the recent phase of the demographic transition in India and the states. High parities, shorter intervals between successive births and high risk age of the mother at either extreme of the childbearing span in high fertility Indian states remain key causal determinants of the slowdown in neonatal, infant and childhood mortality reduction.