The Incidence and Age Distribution of Death: Mortality by Caste, Gender, and Sector of Origin in India in the Mid-2010s

ABSTRACT This paper considers the distribution of mortality across social groups classified by caste, gender and sector of origin in India in the mid-2010s: as such, the essay is intended to be both a methodological/measurement-oriented study and a substantive empirical assessment of an important dimension of human functioning in India. The analysis is carried out employing micro-data on the age-distributions of population and death-rates available in the National Family Health Survey of 2015–16 (NFHS-4). Mortality in the paper is measured in terms of the crude death rate, an indicator of “inefficiency” in the age-distribution of deaths, and an “age-adjusted” death rate which takes account of both the mean and the dispersion of a distribution. The last-mentioned indicator is taken to be the preferred measure of mortality. The analysis in the paper suggests that mortality outcomes across castes replicate the caste hierarchy and that there is a sharp rural-urban divide in the distribution of death. Mortality sex-ratios are found to be relatively more favourable for the lower than the higher castes. The results presented in the paper are not unexpected, but they provide quantitative confirmation of one's worst suspicions regarding the skewed distribution of mortality across social groups in India.