Adult Mortality in India: Trends, Socio-economic Disparities and Consequences

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the adult mortality situation in India. Each chapter ranges from general adult mortality patterns to its consequences in India. It discusses data-related challenges to studying adult mortality and examines the level, trends, and changing patterns, whether convergence or divergence of adult mortality across the regions from 1981 to 2015. Analyzing the mortality risk across different socioeconomic groups of the population in India, it examines the major underlying causes of adult death with a detailed analysis of external causes of death. The volume enhances the reader's understanding of adult health situations through the lenses of gender, caste, religion, rural-urban, economic status, and region of residence, and its severe consequences at the household level. It is a valuable addition to knowledge on demography, epidemiology, health economics, applied statistics, and public health studies worldwide. It is a must-reference work for Master's and Ph.D. scholars to explore India's and low- and middle-income countries' mortality situations.

Dr. Moradhvaj Dhakad is a research scientist at Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and a research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria. His research interest includes investigating health, mortality, and longevity by education and other socioeconomic characteristics and assessing regional inequality in health in developing countries. He completed his Ph.D. in Population Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Before joining Ph.D., he completed Master of Philosophy from JNU and master’s in Population Studies from the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai. He graduated in Statistics from the University of Rajasthan. Dr. Moradhvaj has published research papers in various peer-reviewed journals such as SSM-Population Health, Global Public Health, PLOS ONE, Public Health, Population Space and Place and Health Economics Review,Health & Place, Asian Population Studies. Dr. Moradhvaj was one of the participants in the Young Scientist Summer Program (YSSP) in World Population of the IIASA, Austria. He received the Young Researcher Award at Second Asian Population Forum in Shanghai, China.


Professor Nandita Saikia is a professor in Public Health and Mortality Studies at the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, with ten years of expertise in teaching and research. Professor Saikia also served as faculty in Population Studies at the Centre for Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, for eight years. Professor Saikia was a guest researcher at Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Germany, during 2009–2016. She did her post-doctoral research at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria, during 2017–2019. Her research interest lies in formal demography or mathematical and statistical relations between demographic measures; mortality and cause of death studies using life tables; socioeconomic and regional inequalities in health; disability analysis; quality of demographic data, Tribal Population, spirituality, and health. Prof Saikia received awards and grants for academic achievements/research from reputed universities and organizations such as Australian National University, University of Toronto, Max Plank Society, Indian Statistical Institute, Indian Association for the Study of Population, International Institute for Population Sciences, ICSSR, BIRAC. Professor Saikia published extensively as a lead author on population health issues in internationally reputed journals and in edited books. Prof Saikia is an academic editor in PLos Global Health Journal of Population Research and an associate editor of the Journal of Population Research (Springer Publisher, Australia). Under her supervision, 9 M.Phil. and 13 Ph.D. students defended their Ph.D. dissertations.