The number of deaths of infants (younger than one year of age at death) per 1000 live births (based on one year data).
Calculation
Number of deaths under one year of age (aged 0-364 days) in a given year, per 1000 live births in that year.
Relevant dimensions and subgroups
Calendar year
Country
Region (according to ISARE recommendations)
Sex
Socio-economic status (see data availability and remarks).
Preferred data type and data source
Preferred data type
(In preference order)
1) National population statistics
2) Civil registration and medical registers
Preferred data source
Eurostat
Data availability
Data are available for the EU-27 in the Eurostat database (from 1960 onwards). Data available also by region for the EU-27 (from year 1990 onwards, NUTS-II level), but no data by sex or socio-economic status is available. The ISARE project on regional data has collected data on infant mortality (indicator: Infant mortality per 1000 live births).
Data periodicity
Data are being updated annually.
Rationale
Basic indicator for population health and quality of health care services. Infant mortality rate is a measure of the longer term consequences of perinatal events. Particularly important for monitoring outcomes for high risk groups such as very preterm babies and growth restricted babies.
Remarks
Infant mortality and Infant mortality by socio-economic status are also indicators of the health and long term care strand of the Social Protection Committee, developed under the Open Method of Coordination (OMC). Data for infant mortality by socio-economic status are currently under preparation.
PERISTAT is an EU-funded project on evaluating and monitoring perinatal health in Europe. PERISTAT definition, which is scientifically preferable, is: Number of infant deaths (day 0 through 364) after live birth at or after 22 completed weeks of gestation in a given year , per 1000 live births in the same year. PERISTAT has data only for years 2000 (15 countries) and 2004 (26 countries). Next data round is planned for 2010 data.
For PERISTAT definition, records of gestation time are needed, if not all live births are to be included in the statistics. Comparability is less effected by variation in the registration criteria for live births than by the variation in registration criteria for perinatal mortality. However, the registration of infants with very short gestation may cause variation between countries.
PERISTAT plans in the next phase to explicitly work on integrating their recommendations into the regular Eurostat data collections.
OECD notes: Some of the international variation in infant and neonatal mortality rates may be due to variations among countries in registering practices of premature infants (whether they are reported as live births or not). In several countries, such as in the Nordic countries, very premature babies (with relatively low odds of survival) are registered as live births. This increases mortality rates compared with other countries that do not register them as live births.
For PERISTAT project 2000 data please see: the Special Issue of the European Journal for Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, Volume 111 (2003), Supplement 1, S1–S87.
Definition
