Talk:List of countries by infant and under-five mortality rates

comment
It would be nice if this page were arranged in the same way as List of countries by life expectancy, with the good countries at the top, the contries disambiguated from the regions, and the map colored the same way. Strait 06:23, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Broken Link
The link to the publication at the bottom is broken - New link seems to be: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2006/WPP2006_Highlights_rev.pdf

Firewing1 01:45, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Update for 2006 data?
Should this be updated to the current 2006 data published by Save the Children? If so I'll retype it when I have the time.

http://www.savethechildren.org/index.asp http://www.savethechildren.org/publications/SOWM_2006_final.pdf?stationpub=000000&ArticleID=&NewsID=

In the SOWM report they refer to data in Unicef's State of the World's Children 2006 report, this table. The data's not "as new" as the yearly World Factbook estimates: Unicef gives a 1990 and 2004 juxtaposition. It would be more appropriate to present Unicef figures, but this is my opinion. I haven't gone through other figures to see where the differences are, but the obvious that came to mind, Iraq, is given by World Factbook at around half the figure Unicef gives.212.149.208.130 03:17, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Update for Austria
Is it possbile to update Austria ? It doesn´t have 4,7 it has 3,5 in the first half of 2006 and it had 4,1 for the year 2005

Does Angola have the highest infant mortality rate? Is it from least to greatest or greatest to least? Help me. Fclass 15:19, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Portuguese Information at the Bottom
At the bottom of the page is a list of 2007 infant mortality rates in Portuguese. Should this be translated or moved to another section? Or perhaps removed entirely? DominanChic 01:03, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Please change CIA dtat with UNICEF data!!!
Sorry Guys, I have to point out this page, while well conceived, uses very bad data from the CIA Factbook. Whoever deals with international statistics, especially in the demographical field, knows how incredibly outdated their dataand are: for instance, population data are based on very old projections and growth rates, so that the CIA population of one country with a high polulation growth rate can differ more than 10% from those, more accurate,which are compiled by IMF and World Bank. Now the same problem applies with infant mortality rates (by the way, I think a clear distinction between under-one-year and under-5-years mortality rates should be made, maybe making two different pages, each stating clearly which data is being displayed. To show how bad the data in the present page are (sorry for the tough words to the helpful wikipedians who patiently compiled it with their best intentions). I 'llgive the example of one country: Turkey. This page gives Turkish IMR as 40 per thousand, the same as Morocco (41/1000). That would puzzle anybody who has visited the two Countries -as I did- and compared living conditions in the North-African and the South-European country.Turkey is clearly ahead of Morocco in all social development aspects, how can they perform so poorly in IMR? So I checked the UNICEF Save the Children data, and a clearly different picture emerges: in Morcco the under-1-year IMR is 36 for year 2005, down from 69 in 1990. Under 5 IMR is 40. In Turkey the under-1-year IMR is 26 down from 67 in 1990: the trend is of a much stronger improvement of children's health conditions than in Morocco, so that IMR in Morocco is in 2005 50% higher, and thats now soprise, condiering their per-capita GDP is one third of Turkey's. CIA Factbook data simply misses out completely this important difference in pace, and are probably based on a projections of 15 years old data (so no wonder 67 and 69 become 40 and 41). We have to trust UNICEF data because it's their job. Why should US data have more authority than the data from the United Nations Agency which 190 countries have given the task to deal with the main topic of this page. That woukld make Wkipedia biased. Believe me guys, CIA Factbook is neve reliable, till they increase their Statistical Section's budget and update their data. Sinbad

(check out:) http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/turkey.html http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/morocco.html

Update
CIA World Factbook has 2007 figures. Someone undid my update saying the change wasn't discussed, yet failed to actually start a discussion about it. Well here's the discussion, does anyone have any objections? If not I will re-upload the updated table.

Sbw01f 03:00, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * CIA Factbook data is not accurate for many less developed countries (they look fine for the more developed ones). The UN figures are more in line with those published by national census authorities in general and also track with figures from the independent Population Reference Bureau. The figures in the UN table are an average for the years 2005 to 2010. So, yes take this as an objection to using CIA data rather than UN data. --Polaron | Talk 03:06, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The fact that the U.N. numbers are an average based on dated information and estimations is exactly what concerns me. There is no need to use estimations and averages when we have current, more accurate and static figures available to us. The U.N figures are quite misleading alone. This page cannot be considered accurate, up to date information right now. At the very least, we should have both figures available, like on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29

Sbw01f 03:22, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Why is not concerning you that all CIA fb figures are also estimates? In fact i am not against adding CIA fb estimates as third column, but i totally refuse to delete UN data from table. --Jklamo 04:12, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

They're estimates based on current data, not predictions. It would be impossible to get the numbers 100% correct, but as far as accuracy goes, they're a better present gauge than the UN data. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sbw01f (talk • contribs) 04:58, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The CIA does not at all publish their methodology unlike the UN. That still doesn't explain why even their past figures for the less developed countries do not match those countries' own estimates. --Polaron | Talk 05:09, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Can you cite an example? It is possible that some less developed countries don't keep proper track of these statistics in the first place, or aren't completely honest about them. The only other explanation is that the CIA is making statistics up, which I find to be a very unlikely scenario. Regardless, the fact remains that the U.N. 2005-2010 statistics are averaged predictions based on old data. The numbers do not, and are not intended to accurately represent present day infant mortality rates throughout the world.

Sbw01f 07:00, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * And that means the UN is making statistics up? How does the CIA "measure" infant mortality rates for a given year? How do you know it is not a projection based on past data? Do they conduct their own surveys? If so, we should be able to look them up. The problem is they never do say what their methodology for their numbers are, unlike the UN, which tells you which particular primary sources from which year the numbers were obtained. They also say if adjustments were made based on AIDS or civil war, etc. and what particular model was used to calculate future estimates. I don't trust any statistics that aren't backed up by methodology. The CIA numbers might be useful as a last resort in the absence of any other more reliable source. But if we have a better source, let's use that. Would you be happier if I use the 2007-only UN figure rather than the aggregate? Also, what's wrong with putting both tables in so the readers have a choice? --Polaron | Talk 13:58, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

"Also, what's wrong with putting both tables in so the readers have a choice?"

I don't have a problem with that, I actually suggested it earlier. I'm not saying anyone is making statistics up, only that this particular statistic is hard if not impossible to get completely accurate statistics for, so even if they do tell us their methodology in obtaining their statistics, that doesn't mean they're more accurate. Anyhow, I think we can agree that the best solution would be to post both tables? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sbw01f (talk • contribs) 19:38, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

New Discussion
A discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Lists of countries which could affect the inclusion criteria and title of this and other lists of countries. Editors are invited to participate. Pfainuk talk 11:11, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

EU value cannot be right
The value for European Union cannot be right. All of the higher population countries of the EU, except Poland, have significantly better values than listed for the EU entry. The average, based on population, must be much better. It is nonsense to average just the 27 EU countries without considering their population figures. --92.151.175.65 (talk) 16:37, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

"Live Birth" definition varies by country
Many countries don't include infants in their "live birth" counts until a specific amount of time has passed since the birth, or until the child reaches a point where it is "thriving" in technical terms. Other countries include in their count all births where the baby draws its first breath, reguardless of any other factors. In the same circumstances, other countries would classify these as "still births." This should probably be noted in the introduction of the article, or in footnotes for every contry that has critera beyond the group with the least stringent definition of a live birth. 173.85.41.138 (talk) 04:47, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Did anything ever come out of this? The Infant Mortality page has a CDC article that discusses the differences in reporting of US mortality figures versus EU nations. After accounting for bias in the collection criteria, the US figure was affected (it was lowered). I do think it is worth mentioning in this article someplace that countries have differences in their reporting and collection of these figures. Davebenham (talk) 19:27, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Shameless
How can Indian ppl r so shameless to change their data from 50% to 30%? Shameless —Preceding unsigned comment added by Khalidshou (talk • contribs) 11:15, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Turkey
According to the page here: http://www.sdplatform.com/Haber.aspx?HID=3989 Turkey's infant mortality rate dropped to about 10 or 1%. There is more accurate data available on the Secretary of Health's webpages also, maybe someone should go through the data... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.42.88.181 (talk) 16:54, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorting Oddity 1985-1990
Other column sorts appear to work as expected, but for some reason the 1985-1990 column sorts alphabetically not numerically - thus any country whose figures go over 100 will come before any country with single digit figures (given that none are under 2.0). Jorvikian (talk) 15:50, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

The last column
Looking at infant mortality statistics for the world's countries, every country has experienced a decline over the last several decades - until we reach the last three years, and now we suddenly have an increase for every single country... at least I didn't see any exceptions, although I may not have looked closely enough. Regardless, even if there are a few countries that have not had an increase in infant mortality in the past few years, the vast majority clearly have.

You'd think that such a sudden change in infant mortality trends would be big news. I have spent over an hour on Google trying to find ANY article on the subject and could not find a single one. It makes me wonder if these recent statistics are wrong. And if they're not wrong, why isn't this being talked about? Does anyone know what's going on here? 198.84.234.230 (talk) 05:22, 5 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Let's remove the last column, it adds nothing and only confuses the readers. I like the shades of grey though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.189.170.170 (talk) 06:56, 18 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I have added a note here, explaining the role of the last column, in order to prevent further confusion. --DancingPhilosopher my talk 12:32, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm the one who posted the original question. I noticed there has been a change, that the column has been relabeled as the average from 1995 to 2010. Before it said something like "average for the last three years." That's why I was confused, because it said that infant mortality was again rising in the last three years. But if it's actually the average for the last 15 years, that explains why it is higher. I don't know why it was mislabeled before. Maybe it was supposed to say the "last three columns" (since each column is 5 years, and 5x3 = 15). Anyways, thank you for clearing up that confusion! 198.84.234.230 (talk) 20:07, 18 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, before it said "last three average" without making clear whether it was referring to the last three years or last three columns, in a way that was leaving room for confusion. --DancingPhilosopher my talk 08:30, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Where is the legend for the shades of gray in the timeline table?
Was there ever a legend for the shades of gray in the last table? --Timeshifter (talk) 08:56, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

CIA table. 2016 archive, and 2017 numbers
Reference now also links to archive for 2016 numbers:
 * https://web.archive.org/web/20171019041424/https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2091.html

That is the latest archive still using 2016 numbers. See overall archive with all dates of archiving: --Timeshifter (talk) 21:45, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
 * https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2091.html