What is Infant Mortality rate ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

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.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) 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) 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) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2025 Q82 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q82 — Economy PYQ with Answer