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Infant mortality by sex, 2002 – 2006, NSW and Australia (rate per 1,000 live births)

New South Wales
		2002	2003	2004	2005	2006
Overall Rate	Overall	4.0	3.6	3.5	4.1	4.2
Sex	Male	4.1	3.8	3.9	4.4	4.9
	Female	4.0	3.3	3.0	3.9	3.4
Australia
		2002	2003	2004	2005	2006
Overall Rate	Overall	5.0	4.7	4.7	5.0	4.7

Note: Rate refers to number of deaths of infants aged less than one year per 1,000 live births.

Source: NSW infant deaths are sourced from the NSW Child Death Review Team Registry of Deaths. The NSW population of registered live birth figures are sourced from the NSW Midwives data collection. The Australian mortality rates are sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Cat 3302.0- Deaths, Australia, 2006, http://www.abs.gov.au.

Comment

Considering only the period from 2002 to 2006, there is no clear evidence of a trend. For several years, between 2002 and 2004, there appeared to be some decline in the overall mortality rate, but this was largely reversed in 2005. The rate has remained stable between 2005 and 2006.

Mortality rates for both males and females have fluctuated across this time. The rate for males is consistently higher than for females.

The infant mortality rate in NSW is lower than that for Australia as a whole. As the population of NSW is a relatively large component of the Australian population, changes in mortality rates for NSW influence changes in rates for Australia. In 2006, the difference in infant mortality rates between NSW and Australia as a whole were the smallest they have been over the years 2002 to 2006.