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Definition of Life Expectancy and Infant Mortality Rate

 * Life Expectancy**: the number of years a person is expected to live


 * Infant Mortality rate:** also known as Infant death rate, is the number of children(under 1 year old) dying. This is defined by the number of children dying under 1 of age per 1000 live births.

Why is Infant Mortality a good indicator of a place’s health?
-//Level of Medical care// – If there are no medicines to cure illnesses the number of infants dying can start to increase. -//Presence of Disease// – Children are particularly vulnerable to outbreaks of disease. Disease is a major killer of the young in developing countries. -//Number of doctors// – If a child becomes ill in rural areas the nearest doctor may be many kilometers away. -//Nutrition// – Poor families can’t afford enough food to go around. Hunger and poor diet is a major killer. -//Natural disasters/war// – War and natural disasters affect everyone in a country or region young and old alike // -Cultural // – In many developing areas, girls marry and have children at a young age. This can affect the health of their babies. Sometimes, minorities tend to have more children because of their economic situation (help on the farm)

Why is Life Expectancy a good indicator of a place’s health?
//-Medical care// ** - ** The absence of an effective healthcare system, with efficient hospitals and medical staff, can result in a low life expectancy. Illnesses that would normally be easily cured in developed countries can go untreated in less developed nations and become life threatening. // -Diet //** - ** Having too little food to eat can seriously affect people’s health and reduce how long they can expect to live. Lack of food, and nutritionally poor food, can cause illness and ailments that can shorten people’s lives. A poor diet can also make people weaker and more vulnerable to catching diseases. // -Disease //** - ** A country plagued by diseases can expect this factor to affect its citizens’ life expectancy. Some diseases may not kill a person immediately but make them much weaker and prone to sickness. Over the years this can significantly reduce their life expectancy.
 * - **// Lifestyle //** - ** A combination of factors, such as unsanitary living conditions, pollution, diet, health and poverty, means that the overall quality of life for people can affect a regions’ Life Expectancy. People living under these conditions are more prone to illness and disease – particularly amongst the very young and the very old.

//How gender difference affects life expectancy//
//It is true that women have a higher rate of life expectancy than men? Statics show that currently, the life expectancy for female is 66 years old, while for men it is 62.7, and 64.3 for all people. More specifically, in United States women were expected to have a life expectancy of 80.1 in 2005. Also, it was shown that female infants tend to hassve a higher survival rate than male.//

//Why?//

//The reason that causes this difference is not certain at the moment. However, we do believe that lifesyle have a great effect on this. Generally, men smoke, drive, and drink more than women, which then can lead to accidents, and diseases such as lung cancer. Also, most men work in harsh areas compared to women, such as factories, milltary services, and other employments that require alot of physical labour. Most of the time, men are caught hurt in physical violence more than women, therefore accidents are one of the reason. Also in some culture, men are expected more than women, which leads to men having more pressure. And pressure may lead to higher risks of violence acts, physical abuse or even suicide.//

(Useful Website: [])


 * Global patterns and trends in Infant Mortality
 * Global patterns and trends in Life Expectancy
 * Worldmapper: Global Disease and Health

Sub Pages (e.g. Global Infant Mortality) For each sub –page Use the site [|stat planet] to collect chloropleth global maps for indices of infant mortality (found under mortality) and life expectancy (found under population). Then describe the **__patterns__** within each map. It is also important that you give each map a title (above your jpeg) and source (below your jpeg) with a hyper link to the map.