Accelerating health and educational attainments of children in India

Abstract

Despite considerable progress in both health and education of children over the last few newlinedecades, India is deemed off trackand#8223; in meeting its Millennium Development Goals with newlinerespect to primary completion rate, infant mortality rate (IMR) and under-five mortality newlinerate (U5MR). Cross-country comparisons reveal that the countryand#8223;s progress in terms of newlinevarious child health, child education and overall human development indicators lags newlinebehind not just developed counties, but also several developing countries including newlineChina and Sri Lanka. It is evident that the country has a long way to go to improve its newlinerank in human development to developed country levels. How to accelerate the health newlineand educational attainments of children in India? What are the policy alternatives newlineavailable to the country? How feasible and sustainable are they? These questions form newlinethe subject matter of this thesis. newlinePast studies have shown that both child health and education status are influenced by newlineseveral factors outside of the health and education sectors, and they themselves are newlineinterlinked in several ways. Parentsand#8223; (especially motherand#8223;s) education, access to clean newlinewater and sanitation, and public expenditure on these two sectors apart from social, newlineeconomic and demographic factors have been identified as important determinants of newlinechild health and child education status. However, from a policy perspective, most newlinestudies have overlooked these cross-sectoral interlinkages and have laid stress on the newlineinadequate public expenditure on health and education resulting in insufficient newlineprovisioning of health care and education facilities as well as trained personnel as the newlinemajor handicap to improving child health and education attainment. newlineIgnoring these interlinkages give us only a partial understanding of the factors that newlinehinder Indiaand#8223;s progress in achieving desirable goals for child health and education. newlineMore critically, the policy recommendations coming from such partial / sectoral