Rural-urban migration and utilization of maternal and child health services in mega cities of India

Kunal Keshri, Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad
Kirti Gaur, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

Recent studies have demonstrated that migrants under-utilize maternal and child health services the big cities. Last decade has seen accelerated rural to urban migration towards big cities in India which had led to enormous growth of mega cities. This paper attempts to examine the association between rural to urban migration and utilization of maternal and child health care services in the selected mega cities of India using the data of National Family Health Survey, 2005-06. Results show that after controlling the socio-economic factors non-migrant women are more likely to receive Ante-natal care (ANC) visits as well as delivery assisted by skilled health personnel than rural to urban migrants. Likely-hood of utilization of child health care services (full immunization) increases with increasing level of education. Results lead to the inference that rural to urban migration is a significant predictor for maternal and child health care service utilization in mega-cities of India.