Global Subnational Infant Mortality Estimates for 2015

2015-benchmarked infant mortality rate estimates for 234 countries and territories, with 143 providing subnational data. The dataset, produced by ESDIS, integrates data from national offices, DHS, and MICS surveys conducted between 2006 and 2014. It includes estimates of births and infant deaths mapped to a spatial resolution of approximately 1 kilometer.

Use Cases

• Model spatial patterns of infant mortality rates using subnational unit and grid cell identifiers.
• Calculate aggregated infant mortality rates for custom regions using the provided births and infant deaths estimates as numerator and denominator.
• Analyze correlations between infant mortality and other geospatial data layers by leveraging the 30 arc-second grid cell resolution.
• Benchmark national and subnational health progress against the 2015 estimates for policy evaluation.

Strengths

• Covers 234 countries and territories, with subnational data for 143 of them.
• Provides a high spatial resolution of 30 arc-seconds (~1 km), improved from the previous version's 1/4 degree.
• Includes derived estimates for births and infant deaths to enable rate calculations at different scales.

Limitations

• Data is benchmarked to 2015 and primarily sourced from 2006-2014, making it temporally stale for current analysis.
• Estimates are modeled from multiple sources, introducing potential methodological inconsistencies across regions.
• Unknown sample size or row count for the underlying survey data.

Provenance

Source

ESDIS, integrating data from national offices, Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS).

Collection Method

Modeled estimates benchmarked to 2015, drawn from surveys and official sources from 2006 to 2014.

Time Range

Benchmark year 2015, with source data from 2006-2014.

Freshness

Last updated 2015-12-31; no stated update frequency.

Geography

Global coverage for 234 countries and territories, with subnational units for 143.