A quantile regression approach for child mortality analysis

In this paper, we have explored a quantile regression approach to study the factors affecting the child mortality in India. The annual health survey data has been used for application and the results of quantile regression have been compared with those of a linear regression (LR) model. Factors, such as safe delivery, private delivery, mothers post natal check within 48 hours, breast feeding within 1 hour, full immunizations, fathers literacy rate., etc are found to be significantly associated with child mortality (P value < 0.05). The results have demonstrated that using quantile regression leads to better interpretation and more specific inference about the predictors of child mortality. Hence, we suggest that the quantile regression could be used as an alternative to LR in mortality analysis.