EXPLORING INFANT AND CHILD MORTALITY IN SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND DEMOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVE OF RURAL PUNJAB, PAKISTAN

The population stabilization is a worldwide issue that has attracted the attention of policy makers and program implementers. Government of Pakistan, on realizing the issue, introduced population policy in 2002 to achieve population stabilization by 2020. This study, being imperative in such situation, focuses on infant and child mortality in relation to population stabilization in socio-economic and demographic perspective of rural areas of Punjab, Pakistan and shows that infant and child mortality has crucial adverse consequence on population stabilization: Greater is the likelihood for next live birth if a child under the age of five years died. This one is the innovative aspect of the study. The results of the study are based on a survey conducted in 2005 in three different regions of rural Punjab, Pakistan. The survey collected the retrospective birth histories for a sample of 1751 women who experienced at least one live birth and aged below 49 years. A systematic random sample was employed by a three stage stratified random sampling design. The data consist of socioeconomic and demographic factors for each live birth. This study explores fertility, infant and child mortality in socio-economic and demographic perspective of rural Punjab, Pakistan and proves that the death of a child under the age of five years of age necessarily replaces it by another next live birth. The study further puts evidences that mother education has no impact in bearing a -child loss. The results thus, indicate that population stabilization can successfully be achieved by reducing child mortality only. It is also concluded that infant and child mortality can be reduced substantially by improving education of mother, mother age at marriage, father's income, health of mother and child in addition to breast feeding duration