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America is, by all standards, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and yet, on a daily basis, the supposed benefits of living and being born into this standard of living are not felt by many of this society’s most vulnerable members. And yet, for all the talk by anti-abortion activists of how “pro-life” they are, they rarely, if ever, discuss American’s disgracefully high infant mortality rate or put forth any solutions to solving it.
A new study published in The Lancet from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, first highlighted by The Economist this week, puts this into even starker relief. Women in the United States face higher infant mortality rates than women from countries with similar levels of wealth, and the rate remains stubbornly resistant to what little efforts are made to combat it.
In part, the infant mortality rate is strongly correlated to the high infant mortality rate among African-American women, which (despite all stereotypes to the contrary) isn’t correlated to income or educational levels, pregnancy care or the behavior of mothers. Yet every day, African-American children die in numbers higher than even those born to recent immigrants from Africa.
In a table after the jump, I compare the per capita income of the United States with our mortality rate, our per capita spending on health care (because, as the GOP liked to remind us during teh health care debate, we have the best health care system in the world!) and, just for good measure, the percentage of our GDP that funds our military expenditures — and I then compared those statistics with almost all the countries with comparable child mortality rates. It should come as no surprise, but those countries with similar infant mortality rates all have less than half of our per capita GDP and spend one-fifth or less than us on health care. The only country that even comes close to our health care spending (Luxembourg), has less than half of our child mortality rate; countries with comparable per capita income levels (the UAE, Switzerland and Ireland) all have significantly lower mortality rates (3.0, 4.2 and 4.2 respectively).
What it comes down to, however, is one conclusion: we are failing mothers, and we are failing the children that they choose to have. And all our vaunted health care spending — which, even after reform, will mostly line the pockets of insurance companies and continue the existing disparities between rich and poor within that system — does little or nothing to help these children. There is, however, one thing that all the countries with low child mortality rates have in common: comprehensive, government-led universal health coverage, which ensures that women have care before they contemplate pregnancy, before they attempt pregnancy, while they are pregnant and after their children are born. Huh.
| Country | Child mortality rate | Per capita GDP | Health spending per capita | Military spending as a percentage of GDP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singapore | 2.5 per 1,000 | $50,300 (2009) | $1,536 (2006) | 4.1% (2008) |
| Iceland | 2.6 per 1,000 | $39,600 (2009) | $3,207 (2006) | 0 (2008) |
| Sweden | 2.7 per 1,000 | $36,800 (2009) | $3,162 (2006) | 1.4% (2008) |
| Luxembourg | 2.9 per 1,000 | $78,000 (2009) | $5,494 (2006) | 0.7% (2007) |
| Finland | 3.0 per 1,000 | $34,900 (2009) | $2,656 (2006) | 1.2% (2008) |
| United Arab Emirates | 3.0 per 1,000 | $42,000 (2009) | $1,409 (2006) | 1.9% (2008) |
| Slovenia | 3.2 per 1,000 | $27,900 (2009) | $2,063 (2006) | 1.5% (2008) |
| Italy | 3.3 per 1,000 | $30,300 (2009) | $2,631 (2006) | 1.8% (2008) |
| Portugal | 3.3 per 1,000 | $21,800 (2009) | $2,199 (2006) | 2.0% (2008) |
| Japan | 3.3 per 1,000 | $32.600 (2009) | $2,581 (2006) | 0.9% (2008) |
| Norway | 3.4 per 1,000 | $58,600 (2009) | $4,519 (2006) | 1.5% (2008) |
| Greece | 3.7 per 1,000 | $32,100 (2009) | $2,547 (2006) | 3.3% (2008) |
| Spain | 3.8 per 1,000 | $33,700 (2009) | $2,466 (2006) | 1.2% (2008) |
| Austria | 3.9 per 1,000 | $39,400 (2009) | $3,608 (2006) | 0.9% (2008) |
| France | 3.9 per 1,000 | $32,800 (2009) | $2,656 (2006) | 1.2% (2008) |
| Serbia | 4.0 per 1,000 | $10,400 (2009) | $773 (2006) | 2.6% (2008) |
| Denmark | 4.1 per 1,000 | $36,000 (2009) | $3,773 (2006) | 1.3% (2008) |
| Czech Republic | 4.1 per 1,000 | $25,100 (2009) | $1,511 (2006) | 1.4% (2008) |
| Germany | 4.1 per 1,000 | $34,100 (2009) | $3,465 (2006) | 1.3% (2008) |
| Ireland | 4.2 per 1,000 | $42,200 (2009) | $3,106 (2006) | 0.5% (2008) |
| Switzerland | 4.2 per 1,000 | $41,700 (2009) | $4,179 (2006) | 0.8% (2008) |
| Belgium | 4.3 per 1,000 | $36,600 (2009) | $3,726 (2006) | 1.1% (2008) |
| Netherlands | 4.3 per 1,000 | $39,200 (2009) | $3,481 (2006) | 1.5% (2008) |
| Australia | 4.7 per 1,000 | $38,800 (2009) | $3,119 (2006) | 1.9% (2008) |
| Israel | 4.7 per 1,000 | $28,400 (2009) | $2,034 (2006) | 8.6% (2008) |
| Canada | 4.9 per 1,000 | $38,400 (2009) | $3,672 (2006) | 1.2% (2008) |
| South Korea | 5.1 per 1,000 | $28,000 (2009) | $1,467 (2006) | 2.6% (2008) |
| Cuba | 5.2 per 1,000 | $9,700 (2009) | $674 (2006) | n/a |
| United Kingdom | 5.3 per 1,000 | $35,200 (2009) | $2,815 (2006) | 2.4% (2008) |
| Croatia | 5.4 per 1,000 | $17,600 (2009) | $1,169 (2006) | 1.9% (2007) |
| Hungary | 5.4 per 1,000 | $18,600 (2009) | $1,492 (2006) | 1.3% (2008) |
| New Zealand | 5.8 per 1,000 | $27,300 (2009) | $2,448 (2006) | 1.1% (2008) |
| Taiwan | 6.2 per 1,000 | $29,800 (2009) | n/a | 2.9% (2008) |
| Estonia | 6.3 per 1,000 | $18,700 (2009) | $958 (2006) | 2.2% (2008) |
| Poland | 6.4 per 1,000 | $17,900 (2009) | $919 (2006) | 2.0% (2008) |
| Chile | 6.5 per 1,000 | $14,700 (2009) | $689 (2006) | 3.4% (2008) |
| Slovakia | 6.6 per 1,000 | $21,200 (2009) | $1,279 (2006) | 1.5% (2008) |
| United States | 6.7 per 1,000 | $46,400 (2009) | $6,719 (2006) | 4% (2008) |
| Lithuania | 6.8 per 1,000 | $15,400 (2009) | $981 (2006) | 1.6% (2008) |
(I removed Andorra, Cyprus, Malta and Malaysia despite their lower, single-digit child mortality rates. I did the same for Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Costa Rica, Latvia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzgovina, Thailand and Brunei, though they have single-digit child mortality rates that are between 7.5 and 9.9 percent. It was a long table already.)
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Despite the preaching of the MOTUs from Wall Street and the theological opinions of the GOP, simply being rich does *not* mean you know what do you with your money.
WIC, the Women Infant and Childrens Supplementary Food Program is one of the most successful Federally-funded programs in the United States. Studies find the WIC Program to be cost effective in protecting or improving the health/nutritional status of low-income women, infants and children.
With the following proven results why does this Program continue NOT to have Entitlement status?
WIC reduces fetal deaths and infant mortality.
WIC reduces low birthweight rates and increases the duration of pregnancy.
WIC improves the growth of nutritionally at-risk infants and children.
WIC decreases the incidence of iron deficiency anemia in children.
WIC improves the dietary intake of pregnant and postpartum women and improves weight gain in pregnant women.
Pregnant women participating in WIC receive prenatal care earlier.
Children enrolled in WIC are more likely to have a regular source of medical care and have more up to date immunizations.
WIC helps get children ready to start school: children who receive WIC benefits demonstrate improved intellectual development.
WIC significantly improves children’s diets.
This is a program that works. It should be available to all women and their children.
This post repeatedly confuses the terms child and infant mortality. It ignores the fact that these _child_ mortality rates are point estimates with confidence intervals (often not at all narrow) that make “rankings” of the estimates a dubious endeavor. It also completely ignores data from the self-same paper that contradicts (or at least begs questions of) their final political point.
This post should simply say: I think comprehensive, government-led universal health coverage is better because it is generally correlated with lower estimated child mortality rates. All the rest is just hand waving.
Of course, correlation != causation and all the hand waving helps distract from this inconvenient fact.
Perhaps you’re right. Where is your basis for the assertions you make? What’s the evidence that this chart is based on conflation of child and infant mortality?
Nowhere does the poster state that the correlation indicates causation; she allows readers to draw their own conclusions.
Perhaps we are missing some info; you have, however, not provided any.
Anti-abortion activists are not pro-life, they are pro-birth. After the birth has occurred they don’t really give a damn.
Do you really want to argue infant mortality against abortion?
Done correctly, abortion is 1000 per 1000 child mortality for the babies involved.
How does that fit in your chart?
Jon Stewart said it all: “They, (anti abortion crusaders), will protect you from conception to birth. After that, you’re on your own”.
And don’t worry about the mortality rate. I’m sure the vast majority of those deaths are brown people and those aren’t real people after all. /s
I ran testing for a statewide WIC program back in the ’90s. They were quite emphatic about the fact that WIC was not a welfare program since the then cut-off for WIC benefits was some figure well above the Federal Poverty Line.
And I agree that it should be available to all.
And the pro-abortion types won’t even do that.
Except that a fetus isn’t a child or a baby, no matter how you wish to redefine words.
Ah, of course! the conservatives favorite tool: Cropping comments and statements and even facts to suit their purposes. I’ll bet Frank Luntz is proud of you.
A propos: the infant mortality rate in the U.S. reached its all-time low under Bill Clinton. Under Bush II, it began to rise for the first time in 40 years.
Obama’s awesome health insurance reform will have the USA number 1 in no time. Well, starting in 2014.
And I’ll bet you’re pro-Iraq War, pro-Afghanistan War, and pro-anydamnbody else war. I’ve never heard of a war that didn’t involve the killing of children. And how many of the unwanted children from forced births would you be willing to take in. You can force a woman to have a baby, you cannot force her to be a mother.
We were discussing the necessary hypocrisy that is fixed into the fabric of conservative philosophy on a previous thread. It’s just not possible to believe in the conservative ideology without the hypocrisy.
You lose your bet.
I don’t force women to do anything.
I love babies and little children.
I don’t like what abortion is. I understand it may be the least worst choice in some peoples case. I just wish there were other options available.
How many unwanted babies have YOU adopted? How many poor pregnant women did YOU support financially from conception until the child was at least 18 years old?
Talk’s cheap.
As someone once said, if men were the ones who got pregnant, abortions would be free, unlimited and considered a holy sacrament.
Indeed. How many pregnant women has involuntary “abortions” by being killed by bombs and bullets, etc, in wars?? How many Iraqi, Afghani, Pakisthani, etc, women enjoyed involuntary abortions during the past 8+ years of these wars that our corporate overlords deemed were necessary to our bottom line??
The hypocrisy about abortion is over the top anymore, and let’s not get started about the child rapists in the Catholic Church…
Do you support paying a little more in taxes so indigent women can get proper prenatal care? How much are you willing to give out of your paycheck so that pregnant women have the resources to carry the child and support it after birth? Would you pay a bit more for child care services? Job training? Nutrition and education? How much of your time will you volunteer to assist these women?
You, apparently, have no idea what a “pro-abortion type” wants or not. I believe they are better described as “pro-choice”. They would allow the use of abortion while not necessarily condoning the procedure. The important clue would be to allow the bearer of the fertilized egg to choose for themselves, a distinction seemingly lost on the generalized mental midgets that seem to populate a major part of Texas.
I think big words like “allow” and “choice” can be very scary to many Texans I’ve met, but do try to follow along.
All right, let’s not get stereotypical. I’m Texas born, Texas bred and when I die, I’ll be Texas dead.
“In part, the infant mortality rate is strongly correlated to the high infant mortality rate among African-American women, which (despite all stereotypes to the contrary) isn’t correlated to income or educational levels, pregnancy care or the behavior of mothers. Yet every day, African-American children die in numbers higher than even those born to recent immigrants from Africa.”
It seems that you are saying the only correlation is that the mothers are African-American. If it has no correlation to their income, education, pre-natal care, or mother’s behavior then we seem to be being forced to fix the fact that these women are African-American. How do you propose we do that? Or would you like to rephrase?
“In part, the infant mortality rate is strongly correlated to the high infant mortality rate among African-American women, which (despite all stereotypes to the contrary) isn’t correlated to income or educational levels, pregnancy care or the behavior of mothers. Yet every day, African-American children die in numbers higher than even those born to recent immigrants from Africa.”
This is an idiotic statement. For this to be true, you have to believe that for no good reason our health care system “just happens” to discriminate against black women. No other minorities, not newly arrived black women, just them.
What study could possibly reveal the day to day behavior of the people that are being studied over the long term? Is there some biological reason that black babies die more often? To go on and blame the insurance companies is ridiculous as well. I would wager that the black women who are experiencing high infant mortality rates are on a government health care plan already.
What is your explanation for higher infant mortality rates among African American women than white American women?
Right.
EVERYONE who opposes abortion claims that’s what motivates them–I honestly can’t think of a single exception.
But really, what are they going to say? “I don’t like abortion because I’m such a loser that I think sex should be punishable, and I dislike children so much that I think they’re appropriate to use as a punishment” ?
So we can’t really use professed love of children as a guide to anyone’s motives, now can we?
However, if someone really cared about children, there are a lot of things they could do that are pro-baby and pro-kids. Even pro-neonate. Supporting for free healthcare. Or day care. Or not nickel-and-diming public schools. Or after-school programs. Or subsidized multigenerational
housing. Etc.
On the other hand, if you thought that sex was this terrible thing that should ruin your life, what would you do? (A) Any of the above? Or (B) oppose any sex ed besides “abstinence” education, oppose access to birth control, complain about any homosexuals not firmly in the closet, etc? Oh, and oppose abortion?
(And possibly, go a-trolling on a pro-choice web site–this one, for example.)
Now, what do we see people who call themselves “pro-life” doing when they’re not claiming to love children? Do they do (A) or (B), as a rule?
Alan, do you understand how very hard it is to believe you?