Child Deprivation in Indian Context: Concern About Health- and Education-Related Issues

In many societies, children suffer from unfavourable socio-economic and environmental conditions, which usually damage the prospect of their physical growth and strip them off schooling opportunities. In the absence of availability of adequate nutritional diet, immunisation etc., children suffer from stunted and wasted growth and underweight relative to their age. Further scarcity of resources and resulting poverty also wane the health, and educational development of children. Health-related deprivation index of children has been calculated by using Principal Component Analysis. A recursive simultaneous equation framework has been used to explain the variation of health deprivation of children as well as educational deprivation across the major Indian states, on the basis of some identified explanatory variables. The results suggest that factors like poverty, female literacy rate, low body mass index of mother and full antenatal care have significant association with the level of deprivation. Dropout rate of children has been considered as an index of education deprivation. Several characteristics of household atmosphere of the deprived children including female literacy, poverty, availability of electricity, gender of household head and children health condition have significant impact on the extent of their educational deprivation status. Immediate urgent steps are needed to promote better health and education of the deprived children through implementation of different Government schemes and NGO efforts.