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Birth-weight-specific infant and neonatal mortality: effects of heterogeneity in the birth cohort

Timothy B Gage1

  • 1Department of Anthropology, University of Albany, NY 12222, USA.

Human Biology
|May 28, 2002
PubMed

Insights

Birth cohorts have subpopulations with differing infant mortality risks. A novel statistical method reveals this heterogeneity may explain stalled declines in infant mortality rates.

Area of Science:

  • Human biology
  • Biostatistics
  • Perinatal epidemiology

Background:

  • Infant mortality rates have shown recent decelerations in decline.
  • Ethnic disparities in birth-weight-specific infant mortality persist.
  • Existing models may not fully capture birth cohort heterogeneity.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate birth-weight-specific infant mortality using a novel statistical approach.
  • To identify subpopulations within birth cohorts based on mortality risk.
  • To explore the implications of identified heterogeneity for infant mortality trends and disparities.

Main Methods:

  • Application of parametric mixtures of logistic regressions.
  • Analysis of birth-weight-specific infant mortality data.
  • Development of a novel statistical procedure for population heterogeneity.

Main Results:

  • Birth cohorts comprise at least two subpopulations with distinct infant mortality profiles.
  • A "disturbed" subpopulation, despite higher overall mortality, exhibits lower birth-weight-specific mortality.
  • This phenomenon is hypothesized to result from selective fetal loss in the "disturbed" group.

Conclusions:

  • Identified birth cohort heterogeneity may explain decelerated declines in infant mortality.
  • This heterogeneity could underlie unexplained ethnic differences in infant mortality.
  • The developed statistical methodology has broad applications in human biology and mixture modeling.

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