as a proxy for longrun socioeconomic status such an index has in fact been shown to outperform more traditional income and expenditure measures in terms of explaining differences in health outcomes rutstein and johnson however while it is a valid concern in high mortality contexts this effect should not be overemphasized for a middleincome country like jordan that has already made great progress in reducing child mortality while this does not tell us anything about causalities or the exact magnitude of a correlation and its statistical significance it provides a first overview of the incidence of early childhood mortality in different contexts