Infant/young child mortality rate
Definition: The number of deaths of infants (aged under 1) divided by the number of live births, and the number of deaths of young children (aged 1–4) divided by the population of the same age.
Notes:
- Indigenous infant mortality includes data for NSW, Qld, WA, SA and NT only. These five jurisdictions have been included because there are sufficient levels of Indigenous identification and numbers of deaths to support mortality analysis. They do not represent an Australia figure.
- Data for 2010 have been adjusted for the additional deaths arising from outstanding registration of deaths in Queensland in 2010.
Sources: ABS 2006a, 2007, 2008a, 2009a, 2010, 2012b, 2012c, 2013d, 2013e, 2014a, 2014b, 2015a, 2015b, 2016a, 2016b, 2017a, 2017b; Table S1.4.10.
- The infant mortality rate decreased by 41% (from 531 to 312 deaths per 100,000 live births) between 2001 and 2016.
- Over the same period, the mortality rate for Indigenous infants (based on data from New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory) fell from 1,121 to 602 deaths per 100,000 live births. This was a decrease of 46%, however, the rate was still almost twice that for all infants.
- The mortality rate for children aged 1–4 fell from 25 to 15 deaths per 100,000 population between 2001 and 2016 – a decrease of 40%.
For more information, see Chapter 6.3 'Indigenous child mortality and life expectancy'.