Infant mortality rates (the number of children younger than one year that die per 1000 live births) are incredibly sensitive to disruptions in society. Even a minor disturbance in a region’s economic, social, and political system can create a parallel, observable effect in infant mortality data. Two political scientists, M. Rodwan Abouharb of Louisiana State University and Anessa L. Kimball of Université Laval, offer one of the most comprehensive datasets on infant mortality rates:
Systematic data on annual infant mortality rates are of use to a variety of social science research programs in demography, economics, sociology, and political science. Infant mortality rates may be used both as a proxy measure for economic development, in lieu of energy consumption or GDP-per-capita measures, and as an indicator of the extent to which governments provide for the economic and social welfare of their citizens. Until recently, data were available for only a limited number of countries based on regional or country-level studies and time periods for years after 1950. Here, the authors introduce a new dataset reporting annual infant mortality rates for all states in the world, based on the Correlates of War state system list, between 1816 and 2002. They discuss past research programs using infant mortality rates in conflict studies and describe the dataset by exploring its geographic and temporal coverage. Next, they explain some of the limitations of the dataset as well as issues associated with the data themselves. Finally, they suggest some research areas that might benefit from the use of this dataset. This new dataset is the most comprehensive source on infant mortality rates currently available to social science researchers.
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