Predicting Future Trends of Under Five Mortality Rate for Panama Using Artificial Neural Networks

This study uses annual time series data on under five mortality rate for Panama from 1960 to 2020to predict future trends of U5MR over the period 2021 to 2030. Residuals and forecast evaluation criteria indicate that the applied ANN (12, 12, 1) model is stable in forecasting U5MR. ANN model projections indicate that U5MR will remain around 15 deaths per 1000 live births throughout the out of sample period. Therefore, we encourage the government of Panama to address all the various problems that contribute to mortality among under five children.