Inequality of opportunity in infant mortality in South Asia: A decomposition analysis of survival data
研究了阿富汗、孟加拉国、印度、尼泊尔和巴基斯坦五国婴儿死亡率在家庭和父母社会经济背景上的不平等，提出新方法聚类数据并分解不平等决定因素，发现人口因素、父母教育水平和家庭生活水平是主要贡献因素。
Early-life environments into which newborn babies are born play principal roles in their development. This study explores inequalities in infant mortality that are rooted in household and parental socio-economic backgrounds in five South-Asian countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. Considering multidimensional aspects of socio-demographic and socio-economic status, this study explores disparities in the trajectory of survival rates across infants with dissimilar circumstantial backgrounds over the first 12 months of their lives. This study proposes a new method to first cluster the data into advantaged and disadvantaged types and explore the differences in survival rates by a clustering approach and a random survival forest. Furthermore, this study extends a Shapley-value decomposition method to explore the determinants of inequality. The results indicate that demographic factors, parental educational background and household living standards are major factors contributing to inequality. In order to ameliorate the inequality of opportunity, priority should be given to protecting marginalised infants by compensating for their disadvantaged backgrounds.