Variation in neonatal mortality rates and its socio-economic determinants in South Asian countries

This paper primarily focuses on studying the regional disparities prevailing in neonatal mortality rate over time and then determining the socio-economic factors, especially those related to health, which could explain the variation in neonatal mortality rates in the countries belonging to the South Asian region. This study first investigates the temporal movement of spatial variation in neonatal mortality rate across the eight South Asian countries using three well-known measures of dispersion/inequality, namely, standard deviation, coefficient of variation and the Gini-coefficient. It is found that this variation has increased over the last two decades. To determine country-level socioeconomic factors explaining variation in neonatal mortality rates in these countries, a static panel regression model is used. The country-level characteristics considered include economic well-being, health financing, quality of health governance, mothers’ nutritional status, level of post-natal care, basic sanitation facilities, and also air quality. The results show that air quality (as measured by CO2 emission per capita), and change (over the preceding year) in access to basic sanitation facilities play significant roles in explaining temporal as well as spatial variations in neonatal mortality rate in all the South Asian countries.