Deriving the under-5 mortality curve from summary birth histories: an integrated Brass - Under-5 Log-Quad approach

Under-5 mortality has a strong link with socioeconomic development and population health. Measuring under-5 mortality is still challenging in low- and middle-income countries due to the lack of proper functioning vital statistics systems, and in these cases, its estimation still relies on censuses or household surveys using direct and indirect methods from full or summary birth histories (number of children ever born and number of children alive/dead). In this paper, I propose an update in the classic Brass Method for under-5 and infant mortality estimation. There are two main goals of this paper. The first one is to update the method replacing the model life tables used for estimating the coefficients by a continuous scale that generates coefficients according to user’s input. The second one is to integrate the Brass Method with the under-5 log-quad approach in order to derive the under-5 mortality curve, instead of only aggregate measures of infant and under-5 mortality. This new approach will allow users to generate more fine-grain under-5 mortality measures, such as neonatal mortality rates, from the summary birth histories information taken from surveys and censuses.