Infant Mortality in Brazil: A Probabilistic Record Linkage Approach

Carla J Machado, Centro de Desenvolvimento e Planejamento Regional (CEDEPLAR)
Kenneth Hill, Johns Hopkins University

Objective: To study infant mortality in Brazil, we use data from the 1998-birth cohort of the City of São Paulo, Brazil. Methods: Data are from two files from vital statistics data for São Paulo, the birth and death files, to take advantage of variables only available in the birth record such as birth weight. To link births and deaths we used a probabilistic record linkage procedure, since the two files do not contain unique identifiers. To analyze the matched data, we used weighted logistic regression, weighting observations according to how certain we were that each matched pair corresponded to the same infant. Some main results: Infants of older mothers were less likely to die in the neonatal period and of adolescent mothers were more likely to die in the neonatal and post-neonatal period even after controlling for maternal factors, birth weight, gestational age, and Apgar scores and community development.