Spatially Revised Estimation of Infant Mortality in Bangladesh

Abstract

Infant mortality rate is considered as one of the most important indicators of development of the socio-economic and health status of any country. For Bangladesh, the estimates of infant mortality on 64 districts of the country is available, but these regionally disaggregated estimates, based on sample surveys, may give misleading pictures because in reality they do not capture the neighborhood and contextual influences. If any spatial pattern exists in the characteristics of interest, estimates obtained for a particular district must be adjusted for any spatial effect of the neighboring districts, otherwise the unadjusted estimates alone may give a confounded meaning. Policy implication at regional level on the basis of such estimates may lead to both under coverage and redundancy. In this paper, we utilize a small area estimation approach by intrinsic conditional autoregressive model isolating the effect of the key covariates. Our analysis reveals that there exist spatial autocorrelation in infant mortality over the districts. We obtain revised district level estimates of the infant mortality from available data on infant mortality and other covariates from different sources. We believe our estimates would be more accurate than the nationally available infant mortality dataset. This in the long run, can be supportive in policy measures related to reducing infant mortality.