Distribution of deaths by age among children younger than five years for 99 countries in 2008: a modeling exercise

Under-five mortality rate (U5MR) is a core indicator to track progress toward the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4. With U5MR declining worldwide, knowledge is needed on the age-specific distribution of child deaths to facilitate child survival policy making, program planning and recourse allocation. We used data from 198 Demographic and Health Surveys to model the relationship between the distribution of under-five deaths among children aged 0-1, 1-5, 6-11, 12-23 and 24-59 months and U5MR, neonatal mortality rate (NMR), and infant mortality rate (IMR). This was realized through a multinomial logistic regression. We then applied national U5MR, NMR and IMR to predict for 99 countries for 2008. Across the 99 countries, 40.2% of under-five deaths occurred in the neonatal period, 17.9% among 1-5-month olds, 13.7% among 6-11-month olds, 12.8% among 12-23-month olds, and 15.4% occurred among 24-59-month olds. Results are similar when only a subset of data was applied.