Infant mortality rate in Brazilian municipalities: a proposal of an estimation method

Objectives:

to propose a method to estimate the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) by municipality, taking into consideration the underreporting of deaths and the IMR estimation in small population areas

Methods:

the method was developed on the basis of estimating the correction factors of death and live births by municipality, in the triennium 2009-2011, through indicators that characterize the completeness of vital information. A procedure to test if the corrected number of infant death achieved the expected minimum value was proposed accordingly to the municipality population size. In the case the correction is insufficient the predicted values of a multivariate regression were used to estimate the IMR.

Results:

the estimation models of the vital information correction factors showed inverse and significant correlations with the completeness indicators. The predicted correction factors were applied to all municipalities located in the states with incomplete vital information. In only 230 municipalities, the correction factors were considered not sufficient.

Conclusion:

the findings evidence that there are still great problems to surpass, such as the persistent inequalities related to socioeconomic development, access to health care, and omission of death reporting, which compromises the comprehension of a local situation.

Infant mortality; Municipalities; Underregistratio; Small-area analysis