Tracking the Future Path of Under Five Mortality Rate for Trinidad and Tobago Using Artificial Neural Networks

This study uses annual time series data on under five mortality rate (U5MR) for Trinidad and Tobago from 1960 to 2020 to predict future trends of U5MR over the period 2021 to 2030. Residuals and model evaluation criteria indicate that the applied ANN (12, 12, 1) model is stable in forecasting under five mortality rate. ANN model projections suggest that annual U5MR will hover around 16 deaths throughout the out of sample period. Therefore, we encourage the government of Trinidad and Tobago to address all the issues that affect the successful implementation of the third sustainable development goal (SDG3) in order to all end all preventable under five deaths.