Foetal mortality and mortality during childhood, 1890 till 2011.

Recent studies have pointed out the importance of stillbirth mortality and foetal mortality in general on childhood mortality and other demographic estimates during the demographic transition. Good example of these studies were those carried out by Robert Woods who undertook an analysis of the probability of surviving from conception till delivery, highlighting the importance of this period of life, many times neglected in the analysis in favour of other early mortality estimates, such us neonatal or infant mortality. Most of the models regarding foetal mortality used data from Northern European countries due to their quality and availability. We will show the complexities of modelling foetal mortality using data and examples from other countries especially Southern European countries and Japan, using different datasets, from aggregated data to individual level material. We will try to answer some of the Key questions, such as: What might we expect of the age pattern of foetal and infant mortality in high-mortality populations where life expectancy at birth was less than 40 years? Is it legitimate to estimate the stillbirth rate from “knowledge” of other mortality rates (e.g. early neonatal, endogenous) and, if so, what form of predictive association should be used?