A country's health care delivery system and socioeconomic status is an indicator for infant mortality rates because determines if the country has enough and reliable health services and resources and necessary household appliances that people can access.
In 1967, Iran's infant mortality rate was 128.58 and as of 2012, it has decreased by 113.48. As of a result, the statistics came out to be 15.1.
Figure 1: Annual averaged infant mortality from 1967 to 2012 in Iran taken from Trading Economics.
The problems in Iran regarding high infant mortality rates is correlated with socioeconomic inequality that occurs in the country. To measure socioeconomic status in households, the indicators were "owning a refrigerator, a television, a telephone, a car, a motorcycle, a bicycle, a bathroom, a toilet, type of heating system, use of natural gas for cooking and heating, number of rooms per capita, type of solid garbage disposal, and main source of drinking water" (Hosseinpoor et al., 2005). Hosseinpoor et al. (2005) discovered that people who are of higher socioeconomic status experience low infant mortality rates compare to those who are of low socioeconomic status. Although Hosseinpoor et al. (2006) gathered data on socioeconomic inequality in infant mortality in Iran using data from the Iranian Demographic and Health Survey in 2000, they discovered that the "largest contributions to inequality in infant mortality were owing to household economic status (36.2%) and mother's education (20.9%)." In order to reduce economic inequality one of things is suggested is to make development plans in rural areas since those areas seem to have the highest infant mortality rate.