Trends in utilization of reproductive and child health services among urban poor in India

S.K Mohanty, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Abhishek Kumar, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

This paper examines the economic inequalities in four reproductive and child health indicators, namely, antenatal care, natal care, contraceptive use and child immunization in urban India and two states, namely, Maharashtra and Karnataka, using data from three rounds of National Family Health Survey. The composite wealth index based on economic proxies of households has been computed only for urban India and classified the population into poor and non-poor. The cut off point for the poor has been equated with the officially accepted estimates derived from consumption data by Planning Commission of India. The measures of inequalities such as non poor-poor ratio, concentration index, deprivation index and multivariate techniques are used in analysis. Result indicates that, the rich-poor gap in full immunization, the medical assistance at delivery and three or more antenatal care has increased while that of contraceptive use had declined suggesting protective measures for the urban poor.