BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 82 of 142

Correct — B, proportion of children that die before the age of 1 year as a proportion of 1000 live children born in that particular year. All four options are identical except for one number, so this is a definition question with a single point of discrimination: the age cut-off. The authority is the Registrar General of India's Sample Registration System, whose Statistical Report prints the formula as 'Infant mortality rate (IMR) = Number of infant deaths during the year ÷ Number of live births during the year × 1000' and states in words that 'Infant Mortality Rate is defined as infant deaths (less than one year) per thousand live births'. Under one year, per one thousand live births — which is exactly option (b), and it is the same definition used internationally, so the figure is comparable across countries. The word 'infant' is doing the defining work and is not a loose synonym for 'child': in vital statistics an infant is a person under one year of age, and the age bands above that have their own named rates. India's IMR by this measure stood at 30 in 2019 — 34 in rural areas and 20 in urban — and had fallen to 27 by 2021; Bihar's was 29 in 2019, down from 42 in 2014. The spread across the bigger States in 2019 ran from 6 in Kerala to 46 in Madhya Pradesh. None of the other three options corresponds to any indicator that demographers actually use.

• (a)proportion of children that die before the age of 2 years as a proportion of 1000 live children born in that particular year — Under-two mortality is not a standard demographic rate at all. The recognised bands are under 28 days (neonatal), 28 days to one year (post-neonatal), under one year (infant), one to four years (child) and under five years (under-five). Nothing stops at two, and no vital statistics system in India or elsewhere publishes such a figure.
• (c)proportion of children that die before the age of 4 years as a proportion of 1000 live children born in that particular year — The most dangerous distractor, because it is one year short of something real. The Under-Five Mortality Rate is a genuine and heavily used indicator — India's was 35 in 2019 against an IMR of 30 — and it counts deaths before the fifth birthday, not the fourth. A candidate who half-remembers 'U5MR' can be pulled into a figure that is close enough to feel familiar and is nonetheless wrong.
• (d)proportion of children that die before the age of 3 years as a proportion of 1000 live children born in that particular year — Under-three mortality corresponds to no standard indicator either. It is filler of the same kind as option (a) — a plausible-sounding number inserted to make the age cut-off feel like a matter of degree rather than a definition. Once you know that 'infant' means under one year in vital statistics, all three of these options fall together.

Vital statistics slice early childhood mortality into named bands because the causes of death change sharply with age, and each band therefore points at a different policy failure. Neonatal mortality, in the first 28 days, is dominated by prematurity, birth asphyxia and infection, and responds to institutional delivery and newborn care — in 2019 India's neonatal rate was 22 against an IMR of 30, so roughly three-quarters of infant deaths happened in the first month, and 54 per cent of all infant deaths occurred within the first week alone. Post-neonatal mortality, from 28 days to one year, is more about diarrhoea, pneumonia, immunisation and nutrition. Child mortality from one to four years, and the Under-Five Mortality Rate that spans the whole period, pick up malnutrition and preventable infection. Maternal mortality is measured differently again — as a ratio per 100,000 live births, because maternal deaths are far rarer. In India these numbers come from the Sample Registration System run by the Office of the Registrar General, a large continuous demographic survey that exists precisely because civil registration of births and deaths has historically been incomplete.

When three options differ from the fourth by a single word or number, find the discriminator before reading for sense — here it is the age, 1, 2, 3 or 4 years, and everything else in the four strings is identical. Then decide the discriminator from the vocabulary rather than from plausibility: 'infant' is a technical term meaning under one year, so an infant mortality rate cannot run to two or three or four. The habit generalises across the demography questions BPSC likes. Crude birth rate and crude death rate are per 1,000 population; infant, neonatal and under-five mortality are per 1,000 live births; the maternal mortality ratio is per 100,000 live births; the sex ratio is females per 1,000 males; and the total fertility rate is not a rate per thousand at all but the average number of children a woman would bear over her reproductive life. Getting the denominator right is as examinable as getting the numerator right — the 69th CCE built a whole question on a statement that put IMR per 10,000 instead of per 1,000.

• The Registrar General's Sample Registration System defines it directly: 'Infant Mortality Rate is defined as infant deaths (less than one year) per thousand live births', computed as infant deaths ÷ live births × 1000.
• India's IMR was 30 in 2019 — 34 rural, 20 urban — and 27 in 2021; among the bigger States in 2019 it ranged from 6 in Kerala to 46 in Madhya Pradesh.
• Bihar's IMR was 29 in 2019 (rural 29, urban 27), down from 42 in 2014; Bihar also recorded India's highest total fertility rate in 2019 at 3.1 against a national 2.1.
• Related 2019 rates from the same report: under-five 35, neonatal 22, early neonatal 16, late neonatal 6, post-neonatal 8, perinatal 19, still birth rate 3. Some 54 per cent of infant deaths occurred within the first week of life.
• Denominators to keep straight: crude birth and death rates per 1,000 population; infant, neonatal and under-five mortality per 1,000 live births; maternal mortality ratio per 100,000 live births.

• Reading 'before 4 years' as the Under-Five Mortality Rate. U5MR counts deaths before the fifth birthday, and it is a separate indicator from IMR in any case.
• Getting the denominator wrong. IMR is per 1,000 live births — the 69th CCE built a false statement around 'per 10,000' and it is the commonest error on this definition.
• Treating 'infant' as a general word for a small child. In vital statistics it means under one year exactly, and the bands above it have their own names.

BPSC asks demographic definitions with three near-identical decoys, so the item lives or dies on one word or one number — and it has now asked IMR twice in three editions, as a definition here and as a statement set in the 69th CCE of September 2023. UPSC does the same thing in negative form, offering two wrong statements about the same indicator and expecting the candidate to reject both.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The neonatal mortality rate counts deaths occurring within

  • (a)The first 7 days of life
  • (b)The first 28 days of life
  • (c)The first 6 months of life
  • (d)The first year of life

  Answer(b) The first 28 days of life — split further into early neonatal (first 7 days) and late neonatal (7 to 28 days). Deaths in the first year as a whole give the infant mortality rate.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Maternal Mortality Ratio in India is expressed per

  • (a)1,000 population
  • (b)1,000 live births
  • (c)10,000 live births
  • (d)100,000 live births

  Answer(d) 100,000 live births — a larger denominator than infant mortality's 1,000, because maternal deaths are far rarer and a per-thousand figure would be too small to compare usefully.