Infant and Child Mortality
Mortality affects the volume of a population. Deaths are not equally distributed among all groups; rather many unique patterns have been identified. For example, the probability of dying is high among both extremes of a population's age structure—the very young and the very old. As a general pattern, the death rate is relatively high at age zero, reaches a minimum in the range from ages ten to fifteen, and then begins to increase gradually with increasing age. This increase becomes marked after age forty-five or fifty (Coale 1965).
Infant and child mortality are important because the largest mortality risk differentials between a society with high mortality and one with low mortality are always found within infancy and childhood. Because infant and child mortality are often related to general levels of health and living conditions, they are often thought of as measures by which nations can gauge their current level of socioeconomic development and societal cohesiveness. Comparisons can then be made with past mortality estimates, along with those of neighboring nations, allowing a country to make projections concerning its future development and public policy programs. Assuming this general precept, researchers investigate historical mortality trends in an attempt to isolate general patterns of infant and child mortality.
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