Acknowledgments
The authors are indebted to many individuals for valuable inputs, comments, and encouragement. The late Jose Luis Bobadilla encouraged us concerning the importance of this work and provided guidance to the literature on causes of death among the very young. Kenji Shibuya of WHO provided helpful inputs to an early draft. At an earlier stage of this work, Nancy Hancock and Jia Wang provided valuable inputs for which we are very grateful. Elisabeth Aahman, also of WHO, provided invaluable inputs to the estimates of stillbirth and neonatal mortality rates that this chapter draws on; we owe her particular thanks. Participants at seminars at the Harvard Center for Population and Development and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided valuable comments, and in particular we would like to thank Sevgi Aral and Lincoln Chen. The editors of this volume and two peer reviewers, Arnab Acharya and Linda Martin, provided detailed and valuable critical reaction. Robert Black provided additional important critical reaction.
Notes
1. The term child mortality rate is sometimes used to denote what we call the under five mortality rate. We try to avoid confusion by being explicit about the age range covered.
2. Murray and Lopez (1998) and Shibuya and Murray (1998a, 1998b, 1998c) provide an earlier overall assessment of the burden from some of the major causes of neonatal mortality. Low birthweight as a risk factor is further discussed in Fishman and others (2004) and in chapter 4 of this volume.
3. Allowing the use of negative age weights could achieve some of the same effects as gradual ALP.
