About the health indicators
We provide health related indicators for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and subnational regions within these countries.
The indicators in this database are:
- Percentage of stunted (severe, moderate) children up to five years
- Percentage of wasted (severe, moderate) children up to five years
- Percentage of underweight (severe, moderate) children up to five years
- Percentage of overweight (severe, moderate) children up to five years
- Percentage of children up to one year which is vaccinated
- Child mortality rates
Stunted children have a height which is lower than two standard deviations below median height-for-age. Wasted children have a weight which is less than two standard deviations below median weight-for-height.
Underweight children have a weight which is lower than two standard deviations below median weight-for-age. Overweight children have a weight which is higher two standard deviations above median weight-for-height.
Vaccination rates are given for BCG (against tuberculosis), DTP1, DTP2, DTP3 (against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis) and measles.
Child mortality rates provided are infant (less than one year), child (one to five years), under five, neonatal (up to 28 days) and post-neonatal (29 days up to one year).
Construction of indicators
All indicators are available for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Indicators for LMICs are created by aggregation from household surveys, i.e. taking the average of the values of a characteristic of individuals or households in an area.
The sub-national areas that are used for aggregation are based on the geographic information that is present in the survey datasets. The available regional coding is often, but not always, based on official administrative subdivisions used in the countries.
In cases where regional subdivisions are changes over time, the subdivisions used in earlier and/or later surveys are adjusted to keep comparability over time.
For relatively small datasets a reduction in regions may be done to increase the number of cases on the basis of which aggregation takes place.
For some countries for which regional divisions differ too much between years to make them comparable, different divisions are used for different years.
Data sources
We combine survey data for over 500 recent (1990+) household surveys and other sources for 130+ developing countries and almost 1,500 subnational regions from the following sources:
- Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)
- UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS)
- Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) International
- Barometer Surveys: Afrobarometer, AmericasBarometer, Arab Barometer, Asia Barometer
- Other data sources: Chinese Household Income Project, Chinese Household Finance Survey, Indian Human Development Survey, PAPFAM survey
More information
Detailed information on the construction of indicators through aggregation can be found in: