The age‐cause proxy relationship in infant mortality

Abstract

Data presented in this brief note show that one of the consequences of recent gains in the control of neonatal mortality has been an increase in the frequency of endogenous causes of death in the postneonatal period. This in turn has greatly diminished the validity of using the postneonatal death rate as a proxy for the level of exogenous mortality in infancy. Moreover, although there continues to be a very strong correlation between neonatal and endogenous mortality, the increasing dominance of the latter causes throughout infancy also weakens the value of the age‐cause proxy relationship during the first month of life.