Birth Spacing and Neonatal Mortality in India: Dynamics, Frailty and Fecundity

Sonia Bhalotra () and Arthur van Soest ()

Bristol Economics Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Bristol, UK

Abstract: A dynamic panel data model of neonatal mortality and birth spacing is analyzed, accounting for causal effects of birth spacing on subsequent mortality and of mortality on the next birth interval, while controlling for unobserved heterogeneity in mortality (frailty) and birth spacing (fecundity). The model is estimated using micro data on about 30000 children of 7000 Indian mothers, for whom a complete retrospective record of fertility and child mortality is available. Information on sterilization is used to identify an equation for completion of family formation that is needed to account for right-censoring in the data. We find clear evidence of frailty, fecundity, and causal effects of birth spacing on mortality and vice versa, but find that birth interval effects can explain only a limited share of the correlation between neonatal mortality of successive children in a family.

Keywords: fertility; birth spacing; childhood mortality; health; dynamic panel data models; siblings. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 J13 C33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-hea
Date: 2004-12
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.efm.bris.ac.uk/economics/working_papers/pdffiles/dp04567.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Birth Spacing and Neonatal Mortality in India: Dynamics, Frailty, and Fecundity (2005)
Working Paper: Birth spacing and neonatal mortality in India: dynamics, frailty and fecundity (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bri:uobdis:04/567

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Bristol Economics Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Bristol, UK
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by David Demery ().