World Bank: Infant
Mortality Rate
Click here
to go back to the reports page
Click here
to go back to the World Bank page
Summary
Regions:
- From 1980 to 2015, infant mortality rate (IMR) declined
in all regions of the world.
- By 2015, most regions had rates between 5 and 20.
- Sub-Saharan Africa was the exception, with an IMR of
56, but since 2000 it's rate has been declining sharply.
Countries, Current:
- The World Bank (WB) has IMR data on 192 countries for
2015
- Among these countries, there is very wide variation in
IMR. There are 5 countries with IMR higher than 80: Chad,
Somalia, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, and Angola,
all in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- There are another 41 countries with IMR above 40 but
below 80. 29 of these countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Only one of these, Haiti, is in Latin America and the
Caribbean, and only one, Djibouti, is in Middle East and North
Africa. Two, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, are in Europe and
Central Asia. Three, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, are in
South Asia. Five are in East Asia and the Pacific.
- Of the 15 countries with the highest IMR, all but two,
Afghanistan and Pakistan, are in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- There are 38 countries with IMR below 5, and 63 with IMR
below 10. Of these 63, 6 are in Latin America and Caribbean, 7
are in East Asia and the Pacific, 38 are in Europe and Central
Asia, 8 are in the Middle East and North Africa, 2 are in
North America, and two are in South Asia.
- The countries with the 15 lowest IMR are all in Europe
and Central Asia, except two, Singapore and Japan, in East
Asia and the Pacific. Some of the countries in Europe and
Central Asia are Luxembourg, Iceland, Finland, Andorra,
Norway, Slovenia, Sweden and Cyprus.
Countries, Trends
- The WB has IMR data on 168 countries for 1980.
- Of the 168 countries with complete longitudinal data, 167
showed declines in IMR. Only one, Dominica, showed an
increase, from 15.3 in 1980 to 19.6 in 2015.
- If we use 5 year averages, 1980-1984 to 2011-2015, to
increase stability of the measure, Dominica is still the only
country with an increase in IMR.
- For all other countries, 150 showed declines from 40% to
90%. Another 13 had declines from 25% to 40%.
- All countries with declines of less than 30% were in
Sub-Saharan Africa, except, as mentioned, Dominica. Three
countries, Lesotho, Central African Republic and Zimbabwe, all
in Sub-Saharan Africa, had declines around 18%.
Within Region Variation
- While regional analysis is a good place to start, there
are limits to regional analysis. There is quite a lot of
variation within regions.
- Some countries in Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) have
fairly low IMR, all below 10. On the other hand, other
countries have fairly high IMR, several above 30, and Haiti,
above 50.
- Looking at Sub Saharan Africa, a few countries have IMR
20 or below, while several have IMR at 80 or above.
- Several countries in the Middle East and North Africa
have IMR below 8, while others have IMR above 20. One country,
Djibouti, has IMR of 54, over twice as high as many of the
others with the highest, and 10 times as high as do countries
with the lowest. MENA seems more like Latin America and
Caribbean, with one country standing out much more than the
others.
Data
The World Bank has this indicator:
Mortality rate, infant (per 1,000 live births). Infant mortality
rate is the number of infants dying before reaching one year of
age, per 1,000 live births in a given year.
http://data.worldbank.org/
Data set, with charts and tables, is
here http://gsociology.icaap.org/report/wb/IMR/IMRbyCountry.ods
May be used provided proper citation is given. Cite as:
Infant Mortality Rate
Gene Shackman, Ph.D. The Global Social Change Research Project
Copyright 23 June 2016
http://gsociology.icaap.org/report/wb/IMR/WorldBankIMR.html
Data from 2016 edition of World Development Indicators http://data.worldbank.org/
Click here
to go back to the reports page
Click here
to go back to the World Bank page