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Infant Mortality Rate
The Infant Mortality Rate is the number of deaths of infants under one year of
age per 1,000 live births. This measure is perhaps the most important and widely
used indicator of mortality among infants. Not only is the infant mortality
rate a measure of deaths of infants, it is also an excellent gauge for the
overall health of a community, as it is associated with a wide range of social
and economic factors.
The infant mortality rate is calculated by dividing the number of deaths to
infants under the age of 365 days occurring in a year by the number of births
occurring in that same year, and multiplying by 1,000. There were 339 infant
deaths and 36,831 live births in Arkansas in 1998. The Infant Mortality Rate
= (339 / 36,831) X 1,000 = 9.2 infant deaths per 1,000 live births. The
provisional infant mortality rate for the United States in 1998 was 7.2.
The map indicates that infant mortality varies across the state. Prairie
County had the highest average infant mortality rate for the 1994-1998 period
at 25.4. The counties with the lowest average rates (Cleburne, Cleveland, &
Montgomery) are excellent examples of the limitations of the data. Infant
mortality rates are based on a small number of cases, only about one percent
of all live births. These particular counties had only one or two infant deaths
in the entire five-year period from 1994 through 1998. This results in very
unstable rates. Therefore, great care must be taken in drawing any conclusions
based upon small numbers, especially when comparing rates for individual
counties.
One technique for dealing with the small numbers problem is to aggregate the
data over several years. Another technique is to add several counties together
to form larger units. The ADH Health Management Areas are one such aggregation.
For the 1994-1998 period, the infant mortality rates ranged from a high of
11.5 in Area 9 to a low of 6.7 in Area 3.
Infant mortality rates vary tremendously by race. Between 1994 and 1998,
the average Arkansas rate was 14.4 for Blacks versus 7.7 for Whites.
The Arkansas infant mortality rate has not changed significantly from one
year to the next since 1994, with an average rate of 9.1. It must be
cautioned that even when dealing with data for the entire state, infant
mortality rates are subject to considerable year-to-year variation and what
appear to be major changes may not be statistically significant.
Nationally, the infant mortality rate has experienced a long-term decline,
dropping from 29.2 in 1950 to 20.0 in 1970 to 7.2 in 1998.
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