Basic Guide to the World: Trends in Infant Mortality Rates

Infant mortality rate (IMR) has often been used as an indicator of human development. Thus, a basic understanding of the world would include a study of infant mortality rates. This paper shows world trends in infant mortality rates over the last 50 years. The major trend in IMR over the past half century, worldwide, has been a steady decline. The major trend in IMR among both the Least Developed Countries (LDC) and Mor Developed Countries (MDC) has also been a steady decline. However, IMR declined more among MDCs than it did among the LDCs. At the start of this time, IMR among LDCs was 4 times higher than was IMR among MDCs. At the end of this time, IMR among LDCs was 11 times higher than was IMR among MDCs.

Keywords: infant mortality, infant mortality rate, population, demography, sociology, social science, development studies, development, international development, mortality trends, population trends

JEL Classification: J11

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Shackman, Gene and Wang, Xun and Liu, Ya-Lin, Basic Guide to the World: Trends in Infant Mortality Rates (October 9, 2014). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2508100 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2508100