Some Differentials in Infant and Child Mortality Risks in Pakistan 1962 – 1986

In Pakistan the history of alternative sampling approaches to collect demographic data for direct and indirect estimation of population parameters extends back for three decades. The sources which provided directly usable statistical data for estimating fertility and mortality rates, are the 1962- 65 Population Growth Estimation (PGE), the 1968- 71 and 1976- 79 Population Grwoth Surveys (PGS), and the 1984- 86 Pakistan Demographic Surveys (PDS). Since these surveys yielded series of data which could be directly used for working out estimates which are in accordance with the conventional concepts, their results are being given a prior consideration in this paper. The second series of demographic surveys in Pakistan consists of the one-time retrospective surveys, which provided data to which indirect techniques could be applied for working out the estimates of fertility and mortality. The three most prominent of such surveys are: the 1975 Pakistan Fertility Surveys (PFS), the 1979-80 Population, Labour Force and Migration Survey (PLM) and the 1984-85 Pakistan Contraceptive Prevalence Survey (PCPS). The objective of this paper is to provide some direct and indirect estimates of infant and child mortality risks from these sources with a view to examining differentials and trends in these estimates.