Impact of Maternal Employment On Child Survival in India in The Era of Sustainable Development Goals

ABSTRACTRemarkable achievements have been made in the last few decade to reduce the child mortality worldwide. The increased reach of health programs in India throughout the past few decades has contributed to a decline in postnatal mortality as well as child and infant mortality but, reduction in under 5 mortality remained negligible.  In this paper I explored, to what extent the participation of mothers in the work force influences the under-five mortality. The specific objectives are to explain the trend of survival of children in India and to trace the linkage between maternal employment and child survival in India. The present paper critically analyses the impact of mother’s work standing on under 5 mortality using highly reliable data collected from the recent NFHS conducted in 2015-16. The study population is comprised of children aged 0 to 59 months and born to mothers aged 15 to 49 years. Life Table techniques and Survival curve was used to trace the association of maternal employment on survival of children. The under-five mortality showed a consistent decrease in      India from 1992 to 2015. The results showed that high risk of mortality is identified more among children of non-working mothers rather than working.Keywords: Child health, dual role of mother, maternal employment, motherhood, sustainable development goal, under-five mortality.