High Infant Mortality Drives U.S. Child Death Rates 

High Infant Mortality Drives U.S. Child Death Rates. Credit | Reuters
High Infant Mortality Drives U.S. Child Death Rates. Credit | Reuters

United States: A new study says that children in the U.S. are dying at advanced rates than in other advanced countries. Experimenters set up that about 20,000 furthermore kids under age of 19 die each time in the U.S. compared to strong countries. 

Steven Woolf, a co-author of the study, says that after numerous times of progress, the chances of a child surviving to age 20 are now going down. This study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, paints a sad picture of children’s health in the U.S. 

Critical Factors Behind the Disparity 

For the study the Woolf and his colleagues calculated the median mortality rates and for the children in the 16 countries outside the United States including Australia, Canada, Japan and 13 other European countries from 1999 to 2019. They compared those rates to the mortality rates for children in the U.S. during the same years and then multiplied the difference by the size of the U.S. population for each year.  

High Infant Mortality Drives U.S. Child Death Rates. Credit | Shutterstock
High Infant Mortality Drives U.S. Child Death Rates. Credit | Shutterstock

The disparity found and the study says that it can be partially explained by the U.S.’s high infant mortality rate, and the babies under 1 year old accounted for more than half of the excess deaths. For children over a year of age and, Woolf pointed out four factors that may explain and the gap: firearms and suicide and some car accidents. 

“What’s tragic about this is that we’ve made tremendous progress in recent years in battling pediatric diseases like childhood leukemia and congenital birth defects,” he said. “We’ve also made great progress in preventing injury deaths.” 

High Infant Mortality in the U.S. 

Each year, the U.S. records more than 5 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, far exceeding the rates in other high-income countries where the mortality rates are incredibly high for native Americans and Black infants. 

Woolf said that such deaths are often associated with the abuse or neglect, including the cases of “what was once called shaken baby syndrome where children are violently shaken or disciplined or the impact is fatal. 

High Infant Mortality Drives U.S. Child Death Rates. Credit | Getty Images
High Infant Mortality Drives U.S. Child Death Rates. Credit | Getty Images

Guns, suicides and drugs 

This is also the primary reason for the kids to get killed by the cars and means of transportation that the most other countries which contributes to more accidents. 

But Woolf said the more dramatic difference between the U.S. and its peers is the level of gun ownership, which is “Unimaginable to most of these other countries.”  

Progress and Challenges 

There are several factors that contribute to the infant mortality rate. One is the relatively high rate of the sudden infant death syndrome and unforeseen and unexplained death of an infant younger than 1, compared to other developed nations. 

Shockingly, 2,500 babies in the U.S.  die of SIDS every year and another is that the homicide rate for U.S. infants is relatively high as compared to peer countries like England and Canada.