Tracking Future Trends of Under Five Mortality for Romania Using Artificial Neural Networks

This study uses annual time series data on under five mortality rate (U5MR) for Romania from 1960 to 2020 to predict future trends of U5MR over the period 2021 to 2030. Residuals and model evaluation statistics indicate that the applied ANN (12, 12, 1) model is stable in forecasting U5MR. ANN model projections revealed that annual U5MR will hover around 6 deaths per 1000 live births over the out of sample period. Therefore, we encourage the government of Romania to design strategies that will maintain under five mortality below 25 deaths per 1000 live births.