Talk:infant mortality rate

RFD

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infant mortality rate

SOP. mortality rate of infants. Jamesjiao → ^{T ◊ C} 02:09, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

• Keep. The definition is more specific than that. --Æ&Œ (talk) 02:11, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

  The thing is, is this specific definition applicable across all countries/cultures? Under one and 1000 live births seem to be a little too specific? Jamesjiao → ^{T ◊ C} 02:31, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

For tiny populations, yes, it is not useful. But I do not see how that would destroy the usage’s existence. --Æ&Œ (talk) 02:40, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

This and the following material is suggestive that we a dealing with a specific standard way of calculating a rate of the mortality of infants:

• 2011, Mary Zeiss Stange, ‎Carol K. Oyster, ‎Jane E. Sloan, Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World, Volume 1, page 749

  The infant mortality rate (IMR) is the standard way of measuring infant deaths.

The authors say it is standard and subsequently give the same numerator and denominator. (I would have thought that one would have the deaths counted for a period lagged six months after the births to better match the dying population with the population aborning.) DCDuring TALK 03:17, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Delete, mortality rate cover this, it's obvious that infant mortality rate refers to the mortality rate among infants, and we have entries for both. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:54, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• Keep. The coverage, especially for medicine and social science, of “infant mortality rate”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. shows that this is a standard term indicating a particular definition of 'infant', a particular scale, a particular time period, and a particular accepted mismatch between the population of births and the population in which the deaths occur. DCDuring TALK 13:25, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

I would say those are just conventions, the definition of 'infant' for example could be changed at any time. Notice at infant we don't give specific ages despite it having different legal definitions in different countries. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:48, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• Delete. The definition of infant does vary, and the per 1000 part is just a standard way to quote a number for a stat like this in studies of population statistics. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:01, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

  Oh, it's a standard or conventional meaning within a community, evidenced by use in publications. Why would you want to delete something that is so clearly like an idiom by your own description? We treasure such expressions when it is the linguistics community, the computing community, or certain other communities involved. DCDuring TALK 19:33, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

You implicitly make the point yourself, it it has a meaning within a community, but then a different meaning in the next community, and the next, and the next. For example do the US and UK define it the same way? What about Canada, Indian, Australia and New Zealand? That's before we consider places that don't use English but can still be written about in English. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:33, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

As with many MWEs that we include, there is a general, vague and unspecific cloud of meanings which I would stipulate for purposes of this discussion to be SoP. Then there is a very specific meaning shared by all those who attempt to publish statistics that can be meaningfully compared. It is this letter group that has created the standard conventional meaning that is attestable. Whether there are others that can be attested, I do not know, but I doubt it. DCDuring TALK 20:45, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Even if I conceded the point (and I don't) so what? Metres per second has a standardized international meaning but isn't includable in a dictionary because it's the sum of its parts. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:49, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

The key difference is that there is only one specification of the relevant senses of meter and second and only one way of implementing per, ignoring questions of acceptable approximation. Neither of infant mortality, and rate are well defined, but infant mortality rate is, precisely because it specifies:

1. who is in the class of infants (live-born up to one year in age),
2. that the period is a year, and
3. that the result is to be expressed as a number per thousand per year.

DCDuring TALK 22:21, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Keep. It is a well-established indicator in demography. Read related books. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 15:23, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Keep. but also mention the SoP meaning (the special meaning is dimensionless). --80.114.178.7 21:29, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Kept. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 00:46, 6 January 2014 (UTC)