there are many barriers that can reflect the validity of our statistics of infant mortality. One of these barriers are political economic decisions. Numbers are exaggerated when international funds are being doled out; and underestimated during reelection. The bureaucratic separation of vital death reporting and cultural death rituals stems in part due to structural violence. Individuals living in rural areas of Brazil need to invest large capital for lodging and travel in order to report infant birth to a Brazilian Assistance League office. The negative financial aspects deters registration, as often individuals are of lower income and cannot afford such expenses. Similar to the lack of birth reporting, families in rural Brazil face difficult choices based on already existing structural arrangements when choosing to report infant mortality. Financial constraints such as reliance on food supplementations may also lead to skewed infant mortality data. In developing countries such as Brazil the deaths of impoverished infants are regularly unrecorded into the countries vital registration system; this causes a skew statistically. Culturally validity and contextual soundness can be used to ground the meaning of mortality from a statistical standpoint. In northeast Brazil they have accomplished this standpoint while conducting an ethnographic study combined with an alternative method to survey infant mortality. These types of techniques can develop quality ethnographic data that will ultimately lead to a better portrayal of the magnitude of infant mortality in the region. Political economic reasons have been seen to skew the infant mortality data in the past when governor Ceara devised his presidency campaign on reducing the infant mortality rate during his term in office. By using this new way of surveying, these instances can be minimized and removed, overall creating accurate and sound data. Epidemiology For the world, and for both less developed countries (LDCs) and more developed countries (MDCs), IMR declined significantly between 1960 and 2001. According to the State of the World's Mothers report by Save the Children, the world IMR declined from 126 in 1960 to 57 in 2001. The global neonatal mortality rate, NMR, decreased from 36.6 in 1990 to 18.0 in 2017. However, IMR was, and remains, higher in LDCs. In 2001, the IMR for LDCs (91) was about 10 times as large as it was for MDCs (8). On average, for LDCs, the IMR is 17 times higher than that of MDCs. Also, while both LDCs and MDCs made significant reductions