Human Development in India - NCAER

132 human development in indiaboys over girls is most clearly seen in gender differences inchild mortality and prenatal sex selection, almost all thedata presented in this chapter as well as in Chapters 6 and 7document girls’ disadvantage in education and health care.Immunization data presented in this chapter indicates that46 per cent of girls are fully vaccinated, compared with 49per cent of boys. When their children were sick with minorillnesses like a cough, cold, or fever, parents spent aboutRs 126 on treatment and doctors for boys in the precedingmonth, compared to Rs 105 for girls. These are all smalldifferences but may accumulate to create disadvantagesfor girls. However, we see little of this gender difference inpolio immunizations, for which government campaigns donot rely on parental cooperation. This suggests that publicpolicies must be devised in a way that takes into account aparental preference for boys.The results also suggest that children of poor and lesseducated parents are most likely to be left out of the medicalsystem and experience higher rates of mortality and lowerlevels of vaccination. This points towards another reasonwhy government outreach programmes for children must bestrengthened to cover all children and programmes must relyless on parents and focus more on the delivery of universalservices.Public policies have also sometimes relied on assumedparental indifference or poverty when explaining the pooreducational performance of schools. For example, childlabour is frequently blamed for poor school performanceand dropout. Although child labour is present in Indiansociety and may well be responsible for some proportionof school dropout, the fact that a large proportion of childrenare neither in school nor working suggests that makingschools more welcoming and interesting to these studentsmay have a greater payoff in terms of increasing schoolenrolment than a focus on child labour elimination.HIGHLIGHTS• Infant mortality is largely concentrated in the first month of life.• Infant and child mortality rates vary dramatically by place of residence. Metropolitan cities have an infant mortalityrate of 18 per 1,000, compared with 60 per 1,000 for less developed villages.• Although girls have a biological advantage in survival in the first month of life, they experience higher mortalityafter the first month and into early childhood.• Even within the same family, once past the first month, girls are less likely than their brothers to survive childhood.• At an all India level, 77 per cent of children aged 10–14 are in school and do not engage in any remunerativework. Only 2 per cent of children aged 10–14 are involved in wage work; 9 per cent work on farms orfamily businesses.• However, 11 per cent are neither employed nor in school.