IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/demogr/v54y2017i2d10.1007_s13524-017-0553-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Infant Mortality Rate as a Measure of a Country’s Health: A Robust Method to Improve Reliability and Comparability

Author

Listed:
  • Robert M. Gonzalez

    (University of South Carolina)

  • Donna Gilleskie

    (University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill)

Abstract

Researchers and policymakers often rely on the infant mortality rate as an indicator of a country’s health. Despite arguments about its relevance, uniform measurement of infant mortality is necessary to guarantee its use as a valid measure of population health. Using important socioeconomic indicators, we develop a novel method to adjust country-specific reported infant mortality figures. We conclude that an augmented measure of mortality that includes both infant and late fetal deaths should be considered when assessing levels of social welfare in a country. In addition, mortality statistics that exhibit a substantially high ratio of late fetal to early neonatal deaths should be more closely scrutinized.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert M. Gonzalez & Donna Gilleskie, 2017. "Infant Mortality Rate as a Measure of a Country’s Health: A Robust Method to Improve Reliability and Comparability," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(2), pages 701-720, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:demogr:v:54:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s13524-017-0553-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s13524-017-0553-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13524-017-0553-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s13524-017-0553-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jonathan Gruber & Nathaniel Hendren & Robert M. Townsend, 2014. "The Great Equalizer: Health Care Access and Infant Mortality in Thailand," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 91-107, January.
    2. Sanjeev Gupta & Marijn Verhoeven & Erwin R. Tiongson, 2003. "Public spending on health care and the poor," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(8), pages 685-696, August.
    3. Gerry Redmond & Nadezhda Aleshina & UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre. MONEE project, 2003. "How High is Infant Mortality in Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS?," Papers inwopa03/26, Innocenti Working Papers.
    4. Anthopolos, Rebecca & Becker, Charles M., 2010. "Global Infant Mortality: Correcting for Undercounting," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 467-481, April.
    5. Andrew Foster & Emilio Gutierrez & Naresh Kumar, 2009. "Voluntary Compliance, Pollution Levels, and Infant Mortality in Mexico," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 191-197, May.
    6. Birchenall, Javier A., 2007. "Economic Development and the Escape from High Mortality," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 543-568, April.
    7. Lant Pritchett & Lawrence H. Summers, 1996. "Wealthier is Healthier," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 31(4), pages 841-868.
    8. McGuire, James W., 2006. "Basic health care provision and under-5 mortality: A Cross-National study of developing Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 405-425, March.
    9. Michael Greenstone & Kenneth Y. Chay, 2000. "The Convergence in Black-White Infant Mortality Rates during the 1960's," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 326-332, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jamie M. Sommer, 2020. "Corruption and Health expenditure: A Cross-National Analysis on Infant and Child Mortality," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 32(3), pages 690-717, July.
    2. Christian Posso & Jorge Tamayo & Arlen Guarin & Estefania Saravia, 2024. "Luck of the Draw: The Causal Effect of Physicians on Birth Outcomes," Borradores de Economia 1269, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    3. Banerjee, Rakesh & Maharaj, Riddhi, 2020. "Heat, infant mortality, and adaptation: Evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    4. Wen Fan & Liying Luo, 2020. "Understanding Trends in the Concentration of Infant Mortality Among Disadvantaged White and Black Mothers in the United States, 1983–2013: A Decomposition Analysis," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(3), pages 979-1005, June.
    5. Cortes, Darwin & Gómez, Catalina & Posso, Christian & Suarez, Gabriel, 2023. "Hunting Militias at All Cost: Urban Military Operation and Birth Outcomes," Documentos de Trabajo 20935, Universidad del Rosario.
    6. Agnieszka Genowska & Birute Strukcinskiene & Jacek Jamiołkowski & Paweł Abramowicz & Jerzy Konstantynowicz, 2023. "Emission of Industrial Air Pollution and Mortality Due to Respiratory Diseases: A Birth Cohort Study in Poland," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(2), pages 1-13, January.
    7. Hathi, Payal, 2022. "Population science implications of the inclusion of stillbirths in demographic estimates of child mortality," SocArXiv sz8n9, Center for Open Science.
    8. Geloso, Vincent & Pavlik, Jamie Bologna, 2021. "The Cuban revolution and infant mortality: A synthetic control approach," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    9. Girmay Tsegay Kiross & Catherine Chojenta & Daniel Barker & Deborah Loxton, 2021. "Individual-, household- and community-level determinants of infant mortality in Ethiopia," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(3), pages 1-19, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Farrukh Iqbal & Youssouf Kiendrebeogo, "undated". "The Reduction of Child Mortality in the Middle East and North Africa: A Success Story," Economics Working Papers 20-06/2014, School of Business Administration, American University of Sharjah.
    2. Lionel Kesztenbaum & Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, 2014. "Income versus Sanitation; Mortality Decline in Paris, 1880-1914," PSE Working Papers halshs-01018594, HAL.
    3. Geng Niu & Bertrand Melenberg, 2014. "Trends in Mortality Decrease and Economic Growth," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(5), pages 1755-1773, October.
    4. Casabonne, Ursula & Kenny, Charles, 2012. "The Best Things in Life are (Nearly) Free: Technology, Knowledge, and Global Health," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 21-35.
    5. Lisa Chauvet & Flore Gubert & Sandrine Mesplé-Somps, 2009. "Are Remittances More Effective Than Aid To Reduce Child Mortality ? An Empirical Assessment using Inter and Intra-Country Data," Working Papers halshs-00966367, HAL.
    6. Sonia Bhalotra, 2007. "Spending to save? State health expenditure and infant mortality in India," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(9), pages 911-928, September.
    7. Fiseha Gebregziabher & Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, 2014. "Social Spending and Aggregate Welfare in Developing and Transition Economies," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2014-082, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. Mallesh Ummalla & Asharani Samal & Abdulrasheed Zakari & Sathu Lingamurthy, 2022. "The effect of sanitation and safe drinking water on child mortality and life expectancy: Evidence from a global sample of 100 countries," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(4), pages 778-797, December.
    9. Gebregziabher, Fiseha & Niño-Zarazúa, Miguel, 2014. "Social spending and aggregate welfare in developing and transition economies," WIDER Working Paper Series 082, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    10. Mr. Emanuele Baldacci & Mr. Larry Q Cui & Mr. Benedict J. Clements & Mr. Sanjeev Gupta, 2004. "Social Spending, Human Capital, and Growth in Developing Countries: Implications for Achieving the MDGs," IMF Working Papers 2004/217, International Monetary Fund.
    11. Mohamed Traoré, 2018. "Government spending and inclusive growth in sub-Saharan Africa: A panel VAR analysis," CERDI Working papers hal-01940506, HAL.
    12. Cesur, Resul & Güneş, Pınar Mine & Tekin, Erdal & Ulker, Aydogan, 2017. "The value of socialized medicine: The impact of universal primary healthcare provision on mortality rates in Turkey," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 75-93.
    13. Fang, Pengqian & Dong, Siping & Xiao, Jingjing & Liu, Chaojie & Feng, Xianwei & Wang, Yiping, 2010. "Regional inequality in health and its determinants: Evidence from China," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 14-25, January.
    14. AfDB AfDB, 2007. "Working Paper 91 - Health Expenditures and Health Outcomes in Africa," Working Paper Series 2224, African Development Bank.
    15. McGuire, James W., 2006. "Basic health care provision and under-5 mortality: A Cross-National study of developing Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 405-425, March.
    16. Baldacci, Emanuele & Clements, Benedict & Gupta, Sanjeev & Cui, Qiang, 2008. "Social Spending, Human Capital, and Growth in Developing Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(8), pages 1317-1341, August.
    17. C. S. Verma & Gulnawaz Usmani, 2019. "Relationship Between Health and Economic Growth in India," Indian Journal of Human Development, , vol. 13(3), pages 344-356, December.
    18. Tomoki Fujii, 2018. "Sources of health financing and health outcomes: A panel data analysis," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(12), pages 1996-2015, December.
    19. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4301 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. repec:dau:papers:123456789/10707 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Issa Dianda & Idrissa Ouedraogo, 2021. "The synergistic effect of government health spending and institutional quality on health capital accumulation in WAEMU countries," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 41(2), pages 495-506.
    22. Banerjee, Rakesh & Maharaj, Riddhi, 2020. "Heat, infant mortality, and adaptation: Evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:demogr:v:54:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s13524-017-0553-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.