Infant mortality
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Infant mortality is the death of infants in the first year of life. The leading causes of infant mortality are dehydration and disease.
Major causes of infant mortality in more developed countries include congenital malformation, infection and SIDS. The most common cause of infant mortality of all children around the world has traditionally been dehydration from diarrhea. Because of the success of spreading information about Oral Rehydration Solution (a mixture of salts, sugar and water) to mothers around the world, the rate of children dying from dehydration has been decreasing and has become the second most common cause in the late 1990s. Currently the most common cause is pneumonia.
Infanticide, abuse, abandonment, and neglect may also contribute to infant mortality.
Related statistical categories:
- Perinatal mortality only includes deaths between the foetal viability (28 weeks gestation or 1000g) and the end of the 7th day after delivery.
- Neonatal mortality only includes deaths in the first 27 days of life.
- Post-neonatal death only includes deaths after 28 days of life but before one year.
- Child mortality includes deaths within the first five years.
The infant mortality rate is reported as number of live newborns dying under a year of age per one thousand live births, so that IMRs from different countries can be compared. A good source for the most recent IMR's as well as under 5 mortality rates (U5MR) is the UNICEF publication 'The State of the World's Children' available at http://www.unicef.org/publications/index_18108.html For example, the worst U5MR is 284 in Sierra Leone. (That is, 28% of all children born die before they turn 5 years old.) The 29 countries with the highest U5MRs are in Africa. The U5MR of the United States is 8, and there are 31 countries with lower U5MRs, although many of those use a less stringent definition of mortality than the US. Sweden's is the lowest at 3.
Comparing IMR's
The infant mortality rate correlates very strongly with and is among the best predictors of state failure.Gary King and Langche Zeng, "Improving Forecasts of State Failure," World Politics 53 (July, 2001): 623-658. IMR is also a useful indicator of a country's level of health or development, and is a component of the physical quality of life index. But the method of calculating IMR often varies widely between countries based on the way they define a live birth. The World Health Organization defines a live birth as any born human being who demonstrates independent signs of life, including breathing, voluntary muscle movement, or heartbeat. Many countries, however, including certain European states and Japan, only count as live births cases where an infant breathes at birth, which makes their reported IMR numbers somewhat lower and raises their rates of perinatal mortality. The exclusion of any high-risk infants from the denominator or numerator in reported IMR's can be problematic for comparisons.
A well documented example illustrates this problem. Historically, until the 1990's Russia and the Soviet Union did not count as a live birth or as an infant death extremely premature infants (less than 1,000 g., less than 28 weeks gestational age, or less than 35 cm in length) that were born alive (breathed, had a heartbeat, or exhibited voluntary muscle movement) but failed to survive for at least 7 days.Barbara A. Anderson and Brian D. Silver. 1986. "Infant Mortality in the Soviet Union: Regional Differences and Measurement Issues," Population and Development Review 12, No. 4: 705-737. Although such extremely premature infants typically accounted for only about .005 of all live-born children, their exclusion from both the numerator and the denominator in the reported IMR led to an estimated 22-25% lower reported IMR.In 1991, the Baltic states moved to the WHO standard definition; in 1993 Russia also moved to this definition. In some cases, too, perhaps because hospitals or regional health departments were held accountable for lowering the IMR in their catchment area, infant deaths that occurred in the 12th month were "transferred" statistically to the 13th month (i.e., the second year of life), and thus no longer classified as an infant death.Alain Blum and Roland Pressat, "Une nouvelle table de mortalité pour l'URSS (1984-1985)," Population, 42e Année, No. 6 (Nov., 1987): 843-862, and N. Yu. Ksenofontova. 1994. "Trends in Infant Mortality in the USSR," in W. Lutz, S. Scherbov, and A. Volkov, Eds., Demographic Trends and Patterns in the Soviet Union before 1991 (London: Routledge): 359-378.
Another challenge to comparability is the practice of counting frail or premature infants who die before the normal due date as miscarriages (spontaneous abortions) or those who die during or immediately after childbirth as stillborn. Therefore, the quality of a country's documentation of perinatal mortality can matter greatly to the accuracy of its infant mortality statistics.
Another seemingly paradoxical finding is that when countries with poor medical services introduce new medical centers and services, instead of declining the reported IMR's often increase for a time. The main cause of this is that improvement in access to medical care is often accompanied by improvement in the registration of births and deaths. Deaths that might have occurred in a remote or rural area and not been reported to the government might now be reported by the new medical personnel or facilities. Thus, even if the new health services reduce the actual IMR, the reported IMR may increase.
Global Infant Mortality Trends
For the world, and for both Less Developed Countries (LDCs) and More Developed Countries (MDC) IMR declined significantly between 1960 and 2001. World infant mortality rate declined from 198 in 1960 to 83 in 2001.
However, IMR remained higher in LDCs. In 2001, the Infant Mortality Rate for Less Developed Countries (91) was about 10 times as large as it was for More Developed Countries (8). For Least Developed Countries, the Infant Mortality Rate is 17 times as high as it is for More Developed Countries. Also, while both LDCs and MDCs made dramatic reductions in infant mortality rates, reductions among less developed countries are much less than are reductions among the more developed countries, on average.
As illustrated in Figure I, infant mortality is strongly proportional to decreasing per capita GDP.
Infant mortality rate in countries
Countries and regions with the highest and lowest infant mortality rates (2005 est. CIA Factbook) are shown below.
| Rank | Country \ region | Infant mortality rate (deaths/1,000 live births) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Angola | 187.49 |
| 2 | Afghanistan | 163.07 |
| 3 | Sierra Leone | 162.55 |
| 4 | Liberia | 161.99 |
| 5 | Mozambique | 130.79 |
| ... | ... | ... |
| 222 | Iceland | 3.31 |
| 223 | Japan | 3.26 |
| 224 | Hong Kong, SAR, PRC | 2.96 |
| 225 | Sweden | 2.77 |
| 226 | Singapore | 2.29 |
For complete listing of infant mortality rates in countries, see List of countries by infant mortality rate.
References
External links
- [Infant mortality rate - Country comparison]
- [The World Health Report 2005 – Make Every Mother and Child Count]
- [World Health Statistics - Probability of dying (per 1000) under age five years (under-5 mortality rate)]
- [World Health Statistics - Neonatal mortality rate (per 1000 live births)]
- [Global Social Change Reports] Includes a report showing world trends in infant mortality.
- [State of the World's Mothers 2006] Up to date 2006 analysis of infant mortality rates published by Save the Children.
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