DHS.rates

DHS.rates computes demographic and health indicators from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data to quantify fertility and childhood mortality and to estimate sampling error for survey-based inference.

Key Features:

• Comprehensive indicator calculation: Computes fertility indicators (total fertility rate, general fertility rate, age-specific fertility rates) and childhood mortality indicators (neonatal mortality rate, post-neonatal mortality rate, infant mortality rate, child mortality rate, and under-5 mortality rate).
• National and subnational analysis: Produces estimates at both national and subnational geographic levels.
• Sampling error assessment: Calculates standard error, design effect, relative standard error, and confidence intervals for each demographic indicator.
• Applicability to other surveys: Adapts indicator and sampling error calculations for other population surveys such as the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS).

Scientific Applications:

• Demographic and health research: Provides standardized computations of fertility and childhood mortality indicators for population health studies.
• Public health planning and policy: Supplies indicator estimates and associated uncertainty measures to inform health policy formulation and program evaluation.
• Survey inference and quality assessment: Enables assessment of sampling variability and design effects to support valid statistical inference from survey data.

Methodology:

Implements statistical methods tailored for survey data analysis, automating indicator calculations and sampling error estimation.