Brijesh P. Singh

Couple Interaction and Predicting Vulnerability to Domestic Violence in Uttar Pradesh, India

Domestic violence, when conducted against women, is a type of gender-based violence that negatively impacts a woman’s physical and psychological health, causing insecurity, lack of safety, and loss of health and self-worth. Domestic violence is an important consideration for sexual, reproductive, and child health, as it can affect contraceptive behaviors of couples as well as levels of infant mortality. In the present analysis, an attempt has been made to study the relationship between women’s experience of domestic violence and couple interaction after controlling for certain socioeconomic and demographic variables using logistic regression. This study looks at data from the National Family Health Survey–III conducted from 2005 to 2006 in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state of India. Findings reveal that 43% of women suffer from domestic violence in the society as a whole; however, if a couple makes joint decisions in household matters, the prevalence of domestic violence is observed to be 24% less. Education and occupation of women, standard of living, media exposure, and partner’s alcoholic behaviors are also found to be possible predictors of domestic violence.

Modelling of Male Age at Marriage: Evidences from Western Region of Uttar Pradesh (India)

In the present work, an attempt has been applied to develop a continuous probability model under some assumptions to explain the pattern of male age at marriage. Some statistical measures were also used to understand the nature of data. Parameter estimation has been done by EM algorithm. In order to determine the role of various factors on age at marriage, we applied the hazard regression technique. Some new findings have emerged from the study.

Correlates of Unwanted Births in Bangladesh: A Study through Path Analysis.

Background Unwanted birth is an important public health concern due to its negative association with adverse outcomes of mothers and children as well as socioeconomic development of a country. Although a number of studies have been investigated the determinants of unwanted births through logistic regression analysis, an extensive assessment using path model is lacking. In the current study, we applied path analysis to know the important covariates for unwanted births in Bangladesh. Methods The study used data extracted from Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) 2011. It considered sub-sample consisted of 7,972 women who had given most recent births five years preceding the date of interview or who were currently pregnant at survey time. Correlation analysis was used to find out the significant association with unwanted births. This study provided the factors affecting unwanted births in Bangladesh. The path model was used to determine the direct, indirect and total effects of socio-demographic factors on unwanted births. Results The result exhibited that more than one-tenth of the recent births were unwanted in Bangladesh. The differentials of unwanted births were women’s age, education, age at marriage, religion, socioeconomic status, exposure of mass-media and use of family planning. In correlation analysis, it showed that unwanted births were positively correlated with women age and place of residence and these relationships were significant. On the contrary, unwanted births were inversely significantly correlated with education and social status. The total effects of endogenous variables such as women age, place of residence and use of family planning methods had favorable effect on unwanted births. Conclusion Policymakers and program planners need to design programs and services carefully to reduce unwanted births in Bangladesh, especially, service should focus on helping those groups of women who were identified in the analysis as being at increased risks of unwanted births- older women, illiterate, low socioeconomic status, early age at marriage and rural poor susceptible women.

Infant Mortality and its Determinates in Uttar Pradesh, India

The effects of socio-economic and demographic variables play significant role in infant mortality in less developed states in India. The deleterious effect on infant survival of reduced birth spacing is exacerbated in states such as Uttar Pradesh where economic development is limited. The determinants of infant mortality in developing countries can be classified under two major headings: socioeconomic and demographic. Socio-economic determinants include mother education, place of residence, mother caste and religion; demographic variables include sex and birth order of the child, maternal age at birth, birth interval [1]. For infant mortality, traditional societies, the demographic factors have more impact than the socioeconomic factors. From the NFHS-III, aggregate deaths reported at ages 0-12 are used to estimate infant mortality. The differentials by socioeconomic and demographic variables are examined and then their importance is assessed using binomial logistic regression. Data analysis shows that preceding birth interval length, birth order are the most important factors associated with differential infant mortality risks; sex of the index child and mothers education and their place of residence are also significant. With the aim of updating the earlier findings, the present paper examines whether there have been any changes in the factors explaining differentials in infant mortality in Uttar Pradesh.