Number of under-five deaths

Maternal, newborn, child & adolescent health

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Indicator name: 
 Number of under‑five deaths (thousands) 
Short name: 
 Under-five deaths 
Data type: 
 Count 
Indicator Id: 
 2712 

                            Topic:
                        

                                Mortality and burden of disease
                            

Rationale:

Number of under-five deaths measures the magnitude of child mortality.

Definition:

Number of under-five deaths is the count of deaths occurring to a child, before reaching the age of five.

Disaggregation:

Age, Sex

M&E Framework:

Impact

Method of estimation:

These numbers of under-5 deaths are estimates, derived from the estimated UN IGME under-5 mortality rate and the population from World Population Prospects published by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs; hence they are not necessarily the same as the official national statistics. More precisely, first, 1q4, the probability of dying between 1 to 4 years is derived from 1q0 and 5q0 as follows: 4q1 = (5q0-1q0)/(1-1q0) where 1q0= probability of dying between 0 to 1, estimated by infant mortality rate estimated by the UN IGME , and 5q0=probability of dying between 0 to 5, estimated by under-5 mortality rates by the UN IGME. Then, for each age group 0 and 1-4, the central death rate M0 and M1 is computed as follows: M0 = 1q0/[1-(1-a)* 1q0] M1 = 4* 4q1 / 4*[1-(1-0.4)*4q1] where a is the fraction of year lived by an infant = 0.1 for low mortality country and a= 0.3 for high mortality country Finally, to obtain the number of deaths for each age group 0, 1-4, country population estimates of 0 and 1-4 from the latest available WPP are applied to the death rates of the corresponding age group; the number of deaths are then summed.

Method of estimation of global and regional aggregates:

Global and regional estimates are derived from numbers of estimated deaths, aggregated by relevant region.

Other possible data sources:

Population census

Household surveys

Preferred data sources:

Civil registration with complete coverage

Unit of Measure:

N/A

Unit Multiplier:

Expected frequency of data dissemination:

Annual