Measures of Infant Mortality Rate

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Infant:
Infant are defined in demography as an exact age group namely age 'zero' or those children in the 1st year of life who have not yet reached age one.
Infant Mortality Rate (IMR):
IMR is defined as the number of deaths of infants under age 1 per 1000 live births in the same year.

Three additional problems in measuring IMR are caused by following facts-
1. There are seasonal fluctuations
2. Many babies are born and died in the same calendar year and are omitted in a count of the population under one at birth at the beginning and the end of year.
3. In the most census and survey, there tends to be a much greater under enumeration in infants than that of other.

Computation of IMR:
Four methods in computing IMR:
i) Conventional Infant Mortality Rate estimation
ii) The exact matching of birth & death
iii) The approximate matching of birth & death
iv) Factor methods

The symbols used in the table:

b_o = Number of births in year 0

b₁= Number of births in year 1

b₂ = Number of births in year 2

d_o = Death in year 0 from the births of previous year. 

d₁ = Death in year 0 out of bo from the year 0. 

d₂ = Death in year 1 from the births of year 0. 

d₃ = Death in year 1 out of bo from the year 1. 

d₄ = Death in year 2 from the births of year 1. 

d₅ = Death in year 2 out of bo from the year 2. 

D_o = Deaths in year 0 = d_o + d₁

D₁ = Deaths in year 0 = d₂ + d₃

D₂ = Deaths in year 0 = d₄ + d₅