Rural-Urban Migration, Poverty and Child Survival in Urban Banglades

Despite recent decline, infant and child mortality in Bangladesh is still one of the highest among the developing countries with strong urban-rural differentials. Nearly one in ten children in Bangladesh dies before reaching age five. This paper analyses the levels and trends of childhood mortality in urban Bangladesh, and examines whether children's survival chances are poorer among the urban poor and rural-urban migrants. The data for the study comes from the 1999-2000 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey. The results indicate that, although the indices of infant and child mortality are consistently better in urban areas, the urban-rural differentials in childhood mortality are diminishing in recent years. The study identifies two distinct child morality regimes in urban Bangladesh, one for urban natives and one for rural-urban migrants. Mortality before age five is 1.6 times higher among children born to urban migrants compared to the children born to lifelong urban natives (102 and 62 per 1,000 live births, respectively). The migrant-native mortality differentials fairly correspond with the differences in socioeconomic status.