Social Identity as Determinants to Access Maternal Health Services in Uttar Pradesh, India.

Reduction in maternal mortality is one of UNDP's important Sustainable Development Goals. India alone has a share of almost one-fifth of the world's maternal deaths. Within India, Uttar Pradesh continues to be highest in maternal deaths. Despite unavailability of data on maternal deaths in India, it is evident from proxy indicators on mother's wellbeing that women belonging to lower caste are more vulnerable to maternal deaths than are women of higher caste. Several studies are available on the causes of poor accessibility to maternal health services, but there is a paucity of studies focusing on caste (social identity) as a hindrance to access to maternal health services. Keeping in view the backdrop, the present paper attempts to study the accessibility of maternal health services by different social groups controlling their education and wealth position. The study uses data from the National Family Health Survey-3. The unit of analysis is the women who had home-based child delivery. The dependent variable is the visits made by any health personnel to women who had home-based child delivery. Binary Logistic Regression analysis revealed that after controlling wealth and education, women from scheduled caste category were more than two times less likely to be visited by health workers compared to that for higher caste women. Similarly, educated women of scheduled caste had lower accessibility to health services than did the educated women of the higher caste. Findings suggest that the social identity of a woman is playing a crucial role in or rising over economic and education variables as determinants in accessing maternal health services. This may have a serious implication on the implementation of several maternal health policies in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]