Spousal abuse and infant and child mortality in India.

Abstract

Most of the studies on the relationship between child health and physical violence against mothers have been conducted in developed countries. Few studies on this topic have been conducted in developing countries such as India. Most of these studies are small-scale and have established an association between wife beating and child mortality at the state level or at an even lower level. None of these studies have tried to establish an association between the two for the country as a whole. Wife beating coupled with high levels of poverty womens having less access to money and other resources and womens powerlessness in decision-making in the household can have more severe consequences in developing countries compared with those in developed countries. Therefore the present study tries to examine the relationship between wife beating and infant and child mortality in India. India is a developing country and the problem of wife beating has been prevalent in this society for a long time. The study further explores the association between wife beating and the nutritional status of women and children wife beating and the reporting of pregnancy intendedness and wife beating and the utilization of mate mal and child health services in India.