This chapter reports information on levels, trends, and differentials in perinatal, neonatal, post-neonatal, infant, child, and under age five years mortality. This information is relevant both to the demographic assessment of the population and to health policies and programs. Estimates of infant and child mortality may be an input into population projections, particularly if the level of adult mortality is known from another source or can be inferred with reasonable confidence. Information on mortality of children also serves the needs of health ministries by identifying sectors of the population that are at high risk.
Included in this chapter are indicators of the distribution of children and women according to fertility behavior that place children at an elevated risk of mortality (e.g., childbearing under age 18, over age 34 or after a birth interval less than 24 months). This information is useful for designing and monitoring programs to avoid high-risk behavior and to cope with elevated risks.
Birth/pregnancy history
The indicators related to infant and child mortality are calculated from the DHS birth history or pregnancy history:
· A full birth history is a complete list of all children the woman has ever given birth to including their date of birth, sex, survival status, age (if alive), and age at death (if died). This is the form of birth history found in the majority of DHS surveys. Birth histories include all live births, including children who later died, but omit stillbirths, miscarriages, or abortions. Birth histories are collected in chronological order from first to last.
· A truncated birth history is a list of all births since a particular date, typically for the five years preceding the survey. Truncated birth histories are used in many of the Malaria Indicator Surveys and are collected in reverse chronological order. Truncated birth histories may demonstrate different characteristics than a full birth history as births in the particular time period may be omitted, transferred out of the time period, transferred into the time period.
· A pregnancy history is a complete list of all pregnancies the woman has ever had, including all live births, stillbirths, miscarriages, and abortions. Pregnancy histories have been used in earlier phases of DHS in surveys in countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, as well as Nepal, Philippines, Vietnam, and in some special surveys such as the Afghanistan Mortality Survey, and the Ghana Maternal Health Surveys. In DHS-8, pregnancy histories are used in all DHS surveys in place of birth histories. In surveys using pregnancy histories, the birth history is extracted from the full pregnancy history and is found in the b* series variables. The full pregnancy history is also available in the recode files for these surveys, typically in an s2* series of variables in older surveys and in a p* series for DHS-8 surveys.