Abstract
Background: Despite significant progress in recent decade, the burden of infant mortality in India remains high. As women is the main caregiver to the infant, women empowerment may be the important determinant of infant mortality rate which has received little attention. Therefore, the current study was planned to study the impact of women empowerment on infant mortality and to find the best fit regression model to predict infant mortality rate in various states of India.
 Methods: The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2015-16 data was used and infant mortality rate in various states and union territories of India was mapped. Regression analysis was performed with infant mortality rate as the dependent variable. The exploratory variables (Percentages) used for women empowerment were the literacy among women, women who opted for institutional delivery, women owning a house and/or land (alone or jointly with others), women having a bank or saving account and women having mobile phone that they themselves used. Ordinary Least Square Regression and spatial lag and error regression models were applied. Infant mortality rates predicted by using the best fit model were mapped.
 Results: Institutional delivery, owning a bank account and availability of personal mobile phone showed statistically significant inverse relation with infant mortality rate. Out of three regression models, spatial lag regression model was found to be the best fit model to predict infant mortality rate. The northern and eastern states were predicted to have highest infant mortality rate.
 Conclusion: As northern and eastern states were predicted to have highest infant mortality rate, further studies at individual level may be planned to find out the factors in these regions.
Highlights
Infant mortality rate is one of the important indicators to assess the health and standard of living of a country
As women is the main caregiver to the infant, women empowerment may be the important determinant of utilization of available resources which has received a little attention
In accordance with Tobler’s first law of geography, Silva et al has proved that neighboring regions show similar infant mortality rates than the distant ones which is termed as spatial dependence [7]
Summary
Infant mortality rate is one of the important indicators to assess the health and standard of living of a country. According to World Health Organization, the presence of trained health professional at the time of delivery plays an important role to decrease the child mortality [4] For this reason, India has started a number of health programmes like Janani Suraksha Yojna, Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakaram, to promote institutional delivery. To adjust for this spatial dependence, the spatial statistical methods must be incorporated to analyze the infant mortality rate With this aim, spatial lag and error regression models were built to predict infant mortality rates in different states of India.
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