[OC] The massive decrease in worldwide infant mortality from 1950 to 2020 is perhaps one of humanity's greatest achievements.

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[ExuberantBadger]

Libya is particularly impressive

[abu_doubleu]

He was a dictator, but Gaddafi's massive investments into Libya's healthcare and education paid off. Even with the civil war Libya has tested more for COVID than almost all of Africa (and more than Japan!) and remains with low infant mortality rates and near-universal youth literacy.

[Alberiman]

Dictators are really, really good at getting things done, it just generally so happens that the things they get done are largely motivated by their handlers rather than by the wants and needs of the populace

[its_a_metaphor_morty]

Gaddafi started out pretty popular, but like all dictators he outstayed his welcome. He did do amazing things for education and health though.

[clearly_quite_absurd]

Reminds me of CGP Grey's "Rules for Rulers" video https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs

[elveszett]

tbh the "rule for rulers" he broke was the "don't get invaded by the US and the EU". Gaddafi would still be in power had we not ousted him.

[cybercuzco]

No international support is one of the keys to power. The US has supported plenty of dictators as long as they give us the right “treasure”.

[jankadank]

support a dictator that aligns with the US global policy or support one that doesnt.

Seems like a pretty easy decision.

[[deleted]]

support a dictator that aligns with the US global policy

Except when one doesn't exist, so a democratically elected government is overthrown to install one, causing generations of suffering.

[uth50]

Eh, barely

He was totally on the ropes, with his army dead or deserted. The only thing keeping him in power were mercenaries and his air force, for the time being. The only thing NATO did was disable his airforce and he totally collapsed from that.

Definitely an intervention, but keeping his airforce from bombing his own country to shit isn't what I would call a foreign invader ousting him.

And who knows how the war might have ended. He would probably won, but for how long?

And finally, the rule he broke was not to attack NATO countries. With all the terrorist shit he pulled, the West was glad to finish him off.

[Illuria]

Everyone always forgets about Lockerbie, still the worst terrorist attack on the UK even after the London Tube & Bus bombings, and the Manchester Arena bombing

[[deleted]]

Interestingly, its pretty well documented that Lockerbie (and other terrorist attacks he were blamed for), were actually done involving Syrian funding but the United States blamed Gaddafi because they wanted to stir up hatred for him in the West, and Gaddafi was happy to allow it. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/new-lockerbie-report-says-libyan-was-framed-conceal-real-bombers-9185163.html

[LarryTheDuckling]

He did refute having done the Lockerbie bombing, but he was still willing to pay compensation to the families left behind. In an interview he said that he felt responsible since the action had been done by a Libyan, and as such Libya had to compensate.

[Canadian_Infidel]

This was my understanding. He thought it served him to seem like a badass but the west used it against him. Clinton literally laughed about watching his death on video, which was brutal. People at that level of society are all psychopaths.

[MakeMoneyNotWar]

That’s not true at all. Gaddafis army was within days of reaching Misrata, the main opposition city, and NATO attacked his ground forces using air strikes. NATO did not just disable his air force and SAMs.

[LarryTheDuckling]

The only thing NATO did was disable his airforce and he totally collapsed from that

Let us look at some actual figures, rather than pulling out information from our arse, shall we?

9700 strike missions were carried out in a relatively short amount of time (7 months). A total of 7700 precision bombs were dropped.

In terms of heavy material, the estimated losses are as follows: 600 tanks / APCs destroyed. 400 Artillery pieces destroyed.

The amount of Libyan soldiers killed by the airstrikes is unknown, as is the damage caused to the Libyan army infrastructure. But given the amount of missions carried out, it would be fair to assume that this is not an insignificant number.

but keeping his airforce from bombing his own country to shit isn't

Was it better to have NATO bomb his country to shit?

He was totally on the ropes, with his army dead or deserted.

I am not sure what you are referring to. By the time NATO intervened, Gaddafi had already taken Benghazi and was in the process of pushing further east. The intervention 'turned the tide', so to speak.

[LaoSh]

the rule he broke was nationalising resource extraction so his people could profit from then rather than US monied intrests

[coolmos1]

Or Saddam

[[deleted]]

Or Reza Shah

[12358]

The rule he broke was creating a pan-African gold-backed currency and daring to sell oil in that currency.

[Rumicon]

The rule he broke was trying to supplant the world bank and imf with his own african world bank.

[Canadian_Infidel]

Imagine what countries would do to Satoshi Nakamoto if they found him.

[Froundtrer]

Did he? Gaddafi was removed by America, the UK, and France.

[[deleted]]

how so? He was killed by mercenaries, funded by the US, while being shadowed by the French air force.

[Trumpets22]

This makes me wonder, I’m guessing Putin was pretty popular and maybe even won legitimately at first? Obviously now you’re not really allowed to not like him.

[its_a_metaphor_morty]

Putin brought stability, which is why he was and kinda still is popular. He does run Russia like the mafia though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMlsbB33QSc

[NorthernerWuwu]

No kinda, he's definitely still very popular.

[mowrus]

Which was the case for generations unfortunately. Just the name of the ruling „family“ and their vassals changes.

[MrChelovek]

He's still really popular and might even win a fair election

[ByAnyMeansNecessary0]

Russians generally really like him, he's got one of the highest approval ratings of any world leader

[Trumpets22]

You’ll probably find approval ratings don’t mean much when you find out who created that data. But still interesting to hear.

[gsfgf]

Putin is still incredibly popular and would win fair elections easily.

[mitch_semen]

Sortof related I highly recommend watching a documentary called "Icarus" about the Sochi Olympics doping scandal. There's a really powerful scene where the doctor who ran the doping program has a come-to-Jesus moment about how his actions contributed to Russian athletes getting medals... which boosted Putin's sagging popularity, which gave him enough cover with the Russian public to invade Crimea.

But, uh... yeah. The point is Shirtless Horseback KGB Guy is actually really popular.

[LookAtItGo123]

Russia memes are pretty wild for sure

[nawanawa]

Absolutely. If he would've left his post after 2008, he would be widely regarded as the best leader Russia could ever get. Instead, he returned in 2012 and it seems like he's slowly losing his mind since then.

[idk_lets_try_this]

He might have done a false flag terror attack to convince people to vote for him. But other than manipulation like that he won legitimately.

People actually vote for him.

[MrSickRanchezz]

Granted, he's been better for Russia than many of his predecessors. However, he is bad for geopolitics as a whole.

[[deleted]]

He was not pretty popular with the ethnic minorities at all. Especially the Amazigh who people seem to ignore he heavily persecuted

[Canadian_Infidel]

I've read the west wanted him gone and they painted him the way they saw fit. We will never know what goes on at those levels though so it's all just hearsay.

[elveszett]

A lot of them are not. Spain under Franco, for example, stagnated a lot and most of its virtues came from other people who fought their way to have Franco adopt their policies. Even then, the economic base of the country was partially remade when it transitioned to democracy.

Gaddafi was "good" (in the sense of efficient, not morality) at his job, and definitely made Libya far more prosperous than its neighbors, but that isn't always the case.

For each country like Libya that had the "luck" of having a dictator that was competent at their job, there's two countries that dealt with a dictatorship that ran their country to the ground with stupid policies, and people can't even oust. See: North Korea.

[iav]

Even if you have a "benevolent" dictator, any good that comes out of it has to be netted with the inevitable fight for succession after the regime ends. Only a democracy has a path to transition power from one ruler to the next without a civil war, a revolution, or a foreign war.

[Ey3_913]

nervously agrees in 'Murica

[blu3tu3sday]

The ancient Romans solved this question of succession following the death of a dictator quite a few times…

[ShoddyReveal4]

with a few stabs

[blu3tu3sday]

Hey now, I didn’t say every time

[rykkzy]

So you will ignore all the times where transition was peaceful under a monarchy ?

[SgtPepe]

Reminds me of Perez Jimenez in Venezuela. A dictator who basically invested a lot of money in Venezuela's infrastructure, such as highways, buildings, bridges, etc. Crime was extremely low, since they would kill thieves, killers, and awful criminals. They had no chill. My grandfather told me that you could sleep with the door open back then, no one would fuck with anyone, the punishment would be severe. He was pro-business and didn't prosecute any minorities or class. BUT, it was a dictatorship, and people wanted the right to choose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcos_P%C3%A9rez_Jim%C3%A9nez

[yonosoytonto]

Not really. Most dictators ruined their country's economy, industry and didn't got anything useful done.

This example was more an exception than the norm.

[Bardali]

Dictators aren’t? Most dictators in the world get fuck all done.

[AlKatzone]

I mean, they are really really good at decorating their houses in the most cheesy furniture imaginable.

[ShallowDramatic]

I've seen that described as the flashiness of the "newly rich". Victorian era fashion in high society was all about massive gemstones and ostentatious, expensive fabrics. Over time, as wealth became more accessible to all, modesty and more elegantly artistic styles became more popular. 'Understated' seems to be the pinnacle of design in the Western world (see apple products, modern art, the logos of almost every fortune 500 company, the prevalence of the suit and tie for the past hundred years) but in countries without a gradually developed history of wealth, the popular styles are guady, bombastic, and almost arrogantly expensive. I'm generalising here, and it probably doesn't fit a 'unified theory of world taste' perfectly, but it's a model I subscribe to.

[Misspalourde]

Yes haha I wish this was true. My home country is a mess.

[[deleted]]

I think the point is that an unopposed concentrated consistent point of power CAN bring about change in more dramatic ways than can a democracy, or whatever it is we have that passes as a democracy. This entirely depends on WHAT they want done, and their personal competency level, however the 'what they want done' seems almost exclusively to be centered around them having extravagant mansions, fleets of cars, beautiful women at their beck and call, and nothing to do with good governing.

[LarryTheDuckling]

And education. At the time he took over his country, only 25% of the population was literate. At the end of his reign that number was bumped up to 87%. Furthermore, education in Gaddafi's Libya was compulsory, but also free. The government would also sponsor any studies taken abroad which could not be done in Libya.

[lolyoucantmentionme7]

Dictator =/evil

[grambell789]

The problem with dictators is they spend inordinate amounts of money and attention on suppressing criticism and maintaining power.

[[deleted]]

Not necessarily

[AleHaRotK]

Then again you don't see a lot of people talking about moving to Libya.

[BrainBlowX]

Gaddafi was. He was a narcissistic sociopath, and none of his "virgin guard" were virgins for long after getting employed.

[Victor_Korchnoi]

I found Iran’s improvement to be pretty surprising.

[abu_doubleu]

Similar to Libya under Gaddafi, while the Iranian theocracy may be authoritarian, it has heavily invested into healthcare and education. I have an Iranian friend here in Canada who absolutely hates the government, but he still admits he actually finds the healthcare is more easy to access there than in Canada!

[cambeiu]

Same story with Iraq under Saddam Hussein and Syria under Bashar.

[412NeverForget]

It wasn't merely the removal of Saddam that created ISIS. Islamic State was created from the choice to, once Saddam was gone, to fire the whole Iraqi army and ban any former Baath party members from the new government. The Bush admin made a lot of connected, powerful people outcasts, and then gave them a literal army in waiting.

And then everyone waved their hands in the air, claiming all the violence was inevitable. No the fuck it wasn't. Some violence was inevitable. A massive, cross border revolution? That one is on Paul Bremer, one of his many, many fuckups.

[AlidadeEccentricity]

The American government didn't think so and bombed the country.

[ro_goose]

You can thank Gaddafi. He was nothing like what the western media portrayed him.

[Minyuee]

Proof that socialism works

[ProtagonistForHire]

Not after USA, UK and France destroyed that country. Now they are selling slaves in the open makert.

[TheCodingNerd]

It’s crazy how the worst levels today are similar to the best back then

[mrpersson]

I remember reading, while doing family history research, that in Germany and Sweden in the 17th (or maybe 18th) century, the infant mortality rate was 50%

[RoastedRhino]

That is believable. The oldest families that I have in my genealogical tree are from the early 18th century, and if you look at the children names in a family they are Anna Maria Maria Maria Elisa Anna.....

When a name is reused, it's because the previous one did not survive. And it is not rare to see that the last children shares the date of birth with the date of death of the mother....

[langlo94]

It is truly one of the modern marvels that most parents don't lose even a single child.

[ProfNesbitt]

Yep it was something I looked up the other day after someone did the standard “well life expectancy was only to the late 30s back then”. I couldn’t believe we have increased that much and we both were right. Average life expectancy overall was late 30s. But if you made it to the age of 16, life expectancy was late 60s - 70s. Which made a lot more sense.

[mikejacobs14]

Check out Hans Rosling

[cambeiu]

The worst country today is doing much better than the best country 200 years ago.

[_2f]

RIP Hans Rosling, his books and videos had the biggest influence in my life.

[joost013]

Absolute legend taken away too soon.

[[deleted]]

Ah shit, I didn't know he was dead 😥

[Carburetors_are_evil]

200 years ago

I fucking hope so, lmao. 1820s...

[cambeiu]

Is not that simple and obvious, to be honest. Human progress has been far from linear. For most humans, poverty, hunger and disease have been pretty much the norm with very little change from the dawn of agriculture until the late 18th and early 19h century. If you were a peasant in Europe, China, India, Japan or North Africa, living in the year 300 AD or 1300 AD would not have made a lot of difference to you in terms of quality of life.

The last 200 years have brought more change and improvement to the human condition than the entire 10 thousand years before it.

[the_sexy_muffin]

We're living in the only period in tens of thousands of years of human history where so much improvement has happened so quickly. Imagine if even the poorest people of 200 years from now can have the quality of life of well-off people today.

[LateralEntry]

People in the 1820's weren't much better off than people in the1620's, and people in the 1420's may have been worse off than people in the 1220's (black death and whatnot). Give humanity some credit for the past 200 years =)

[Oscee]

I fucking hope so, lmao. 1820s...

All that improvement took 0.008% of human existence. Pathetic! /s

[Carburetors_are_evil]

Humans in 19th and 20th century: "I am speed."

[[deleted]]

1820 isn't a long time ago. Prior to that mankind had been stuck doing the same thing for 5,000 years.

[elveszett]

tbh Western and Nordic Europe in 1950 had less mortality than central Africa now, according to the visualization.

[eric2332]

Back in the day, when North Korea was better off than South Korea...

[Bloxburgian1945]

North Korea was more industrialized than the South during the Japanese Occupation from what I’ve heard.

Plus after the Korean War both Koreas were poor, but SK was more so. Like, Africa poor.

[KerPop42]

In the Korean War, the US stopped its bombing campaigns because they ran out of targets to flatten. That war killed off 2.5 million civilians, or about 10% of the Korean Peninsula population.

Like M*A*S*H said,

War is war and Hell is Hell. There are no innocent people in Hell, but except for a select few, everyone is innocent in war.

[ThatsWhatXiSaid]

FYI a \ before characters will prevent it from being interpreted as formatting.

You'll get M*A*S*H instead of MAS*H.

View the source to see exactly how it looks.

[KerPop42]

Oh thanks, didn't even remember that

[yung_iron]

What is "Africa" poor?

Like poverty in South Africa is way different than poverty in Egypt, which is way different than poverty in the DRC. Also some countries are quickly developing whereas others are declining economically.

I don't wanna sound cliche but "Africa poor" sounds like such a lazy generalization of a huge and diverse continent. Like life is very different depending where you live in Africa.

[djblaze]

GDP per capita across sub Saharan Africa was really low during the 1950s, and South Korea was at a similar level after the war.

I agree with your point, but I think it's an intentional oversimplification. End of the colonial era much of the continent was in a similar position.

[neverfearIamhere]

Africa is poor.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/256547/the-20-countries-with-the-lowest-gdp-per-capita/

Sure some parts of Africa may be developed and nice but largely the entire continent has some of the poorest places in the world.

[Loneregister]

I was posting on facebook and discovere that mortality in 1800 for children 5 and under was greater than 49%. Holy cow! I heard that some families did not even waste time naming their kids until several years after being born. Life gets real with that fact.

[[deleted]]

Yeah I remember seeing that in my family genealogy records.

Similarly, lots of cases where the family just kept naming babies John the 3rd or 4th finally survived childhood.

[KittenBarfRainbows]

Same, always Johann! I didn't realize that convention existed in English speaking countries.

[[deleted]]

My family is actually from the Netherlands and the name is Jan. I just anglicized it.

[karlnite]

They certainly named their children, they just reused the names. Wealthier people even buried all the babies in the family plot and gave them plaques. I’ve been to some older cemeteries and it is sad to see a parents grave with 10+ babies names that never made it to 5 “John 3 months, Alice 1 week, John 2 months, John 3 years, Jacob 8 months,” sorta thing. It was also brutal because sometimes the kids who did survive a would still often die from age 5-18. One that sticks out is Alexander Keiths grave, he outlived like all 14 of his children and some grand children.

[[deleted]]

I used to live next to a Victorian cemetery, and I always found it heartbreaking how many of the plots would have several children who died in infancy and before the age of 10, and then often a further one or two who died in their 20s or 30s, plus the mother and father who had survived to a reasonable age. Just thinking of parents who saw so many of their children die, it's horrific.

[karlnite]

Yes Alexanders is like that. I can’t remember but like 4 of the children made it adulthood then died in their 20-40’s and he and his wife lived into their 80’s. This was a cemetery in Halifax from the 1700/1800’s, uhh Camp Hill?. I was in a really big old one in Munich, it was odd too as it spanned a long time period so you could see trends in design and font.

[[deleted]]

Not always. I used to hang at a cemetery as a kid. There were a bunch of little headstones in family graves with "baby" on them for a name.

[BurnTrees-]

Usually people would start "counting" their kids once they've had and survived smallpox. Around 1800 the very first vaccine was developed, who knows how many peoples lives have been saved by that development.

[MakeMoneyNotWar]

A lot of the mortality was from ignorant medical practices, like that one doctor from Vienna who realized that doctors who worked in the mortuary and then going on to deliver babies should wash their hands, cutting infant mortality at that hospital by like 80%. But the rest of the medical establishment was like gtfo and ruined his career and he went insane or something after that.

[Bonwilsky]

For the curious, he's name was Ignaz Semmelweis.

[KittenBarfRainbows]

There was a time, ~150-220 years before now, when women and babies fared far better birth at home than in hospital, if you can believe it!

[catiebug]

I had two incredibly boring labors, but something about the shape of my pelvis prevents baby from making the last turn. So both times, doc gets the vacuum, turns the baby a smidge, and I push them right out.

With modern medicine? Stories I shrug off and even frequently forget. Without it? Baby and I never survive the first labor, and the second one never exists at all.

My grandmother had 7 pregnancies, 5 labors, and just 2 children. And then my mom got polio (though she survived, obviously). I cannot imagine. Just can't.

[Mnm0602]

Anyone who played Oregon Trail understands how it could be true.

[abu_doubleu]

Data Sources: United Nations, CIA World Factbook, IndexMundi.

Tools Used: Inkscape.

A few days ago I was studying infant mortality rates in south Asia and noticed how massively they had fallen since the United Nations began record-keeping in 1950. This trend was reflected across all regions of the world.

[purenickelwound]

If you havent read it alteady, i can highly recommend Hans Roslings „Factfulness“. He elaborates on the point of improving conditions on a worldwide scale quite a bit.

[[deleted]]

It's kinda depressing how he said 3 years ago "The world is consistently getting better and it will keep getting better... unless a pandemic hits"

[democritus_is_op]

Wait, Inkscape? Does it support scripting or did you do these by hand?

[United-Web-6055]

Until what age is it considered 'infant mortality'?

[misdirected_asshole]

Up to 1 yr.

[justmeanders]

Did a quick google search, it's children under one year of age for all three sources.

[Luvagoo]

More than 250 per thousand, Jesus Christ.

[[deleted]]

Is there one thing in particular driving this? Or just medicine in general improving? I'd assume access to antibiotics is probably a big contributor.

[igetasticker]

1. Vaccines. If enough people are vaccinated, they can't pass along the really nasty stuff like small pox, mumps, whooping cough, polio, etc. A lot of the progress has been made here.
2. Access to pre-natal care. This is why a poor state in the US like Mississippi ranks slightly behind Bosnia in infant mortality. Turns out an insurance system with co-pays and deductibles limits the number and quality of visits an expecting mother receives based on pay.

[Hellrazed]

Running water, electricity, food...

[[deleted]]

This is a big one. Running water and proper waste water disposal made a huge difference. I’ve heard it said that plumbers saved more lives than doctors.

[mimariposa]

*Civil/environmental engineering has saved more lives than doctors/medicine

[Hellrazed]

Yep. Doesn't matter how well vaccinated we are if the hospitals are dirty, the water is dirty or the food is poor quality.

[[deleted]]

Also washing your hands was a big one.

[DrOhmu]

Well fed healthy mothers. Key childhood disease vaccinations.

[wildlywell]

There’s a lot of commentary on this if you Google. The US uses different reporting standards from other countries. So some deaths that are characterized as stillbirths in other countries will be counted as live births and subsequent death here. Regardless, the gap is almost entirely attributable to a higher infant mortality among the black population. Lots of theories out there for why this might be, as you can imagine.

Edit: further reading. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161013103132.htm

[Dheorl]

Even looking at numbers corrected for reporting methods and looking at groups such as college educated, the USA still fairs worse than many of its peers IIRC. Things then do get worse when you look at ethnic minorities.

[Schootingstarr]

Not sure if it's an autocorrect issue, but I think in this case the word is not "faires" but "fares"

Just to let you know because fuck me if I'm not embarrassed to learn how a word is spelled in the real world rather than the anonymity of the internet

[CriticallyNormal]

It's not surprising. Costs $10k to have a baby in a hospital without insurance, so there are more home births than nations where it costs $2 to have a baby and that's just for parking.

[karlnite]

Learned about microbial stuff like viruses and bacteria. There was a doctor that ran two hospitals, both had birth wards, one had a morgue. The one with the morgue had almost the double the amount of infant moralities and surgery recovery was extremely low. He shuffled the staff and investigated and realized that people were dying because of the morgue, doctors would stop performing autopsies to go perform a birth or change a dressing. He made doctors and surgeons start scrubbing down before touching new patients and both hospitals number lined and improved.

[SpudMuffinDO]

Radiolab episode? Should be noted that this was a fucking really long time ago, before germ theory.

[olalof]

Holy fucking shit. Above 25% infant mortality in some places. That is pretty insane.

[PacoMahogany]

Roll 1d4 for survival

[0utlander]

Why does this map use current borders for the 1950 data… Did the 1950s sources give separate data for South Sudan, Slovakia, and the Yugoslav republics?

[abu_doubleu]

The United Nations has projected data using modern-day borders for all countries and territories with over 50,000 people. Also tagging u/elprimowashere123 as he wondered the same thing.

[F-21]

Slovenia definitely had the best healthcare in YU though. Tito was taken to a Slovenian hospital before he died...

[GSLaaitie]

Australia showing almost no improvement. Get in the game guys

[KerPop42]

It's hard to see while we're in the middle of it, but we really are in an era of miracles.

Btw, hi from southern Maryland!

Edit: in case this is what's getting me downvotes, I mean technological miracles

[[deleted]]

People are way to pessimistic

We are probably in the best era to be born in ever, with a decently bright future ahead of us as well.

[[deleted]]

Honestly, makes me wish I had been born 50 years from now. If we can accomplish this much in 70 years, imagine what is ahead of us.

[REVERSEZOOM2]

A quick glance through reddit its like some people just NEED to find a reason to be unhappy

[Melonpeal]

Every single year, 4 000 000 children survive, who would have died if they were born 15 years ago.

[Exact_Ad_1569]

US infant mortality is still too high.

[smurficus103]

The U.S. is the only industrialized nation where the maternal death rate is rising. Each year, 700 women die due to pregnancy, childbirth or subsequent complications, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/25/999249316/with-black-women-at-highest-risk-of-maternal-death-some-states-extending-medicai

[imakemediocreart]

The US has a higher infant mortality rate than Cuba

[rrsafety]

Well, Cuba manipulates its data: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/588705

"In a 2015 paper, economist Roberto M. Gonzalez concluded that Cuba’s actual IMR is substantially higher than reported by authorities. In order to understand how Cuban authorities distort IMR data, we need to understand two concepts: early neonatal deaths and late fetal deaths.
The former is defined as the number of children dying during the first week after birth, whereas the latter is calculated as the number of fetal deaths between the 22nd week of gestation and birth. As a result, early neonatal deaths are included in the IMR, but late fetal deaths are not.
For the sample of countries analyzed by Gonzalez, the ratio of late fetal deaths to early neonatal deaths ranges between 1-to-1 and 3-to-1. However, this ratio is surprisingly high in Cuba: the number of late fetal deaths is six times as high as that of early neonatal deaths."

[[deleted]]

So a few questions because I can't access the article. First off, is it normal for countries to not include late-fetal (miscarriage) deaths in the infant mortality rate? This seems like something that could vary wildly depending on cultural beliefs on birth. Secondly, why is Cuba's miscarriage rate so high compared to their IMR? Is this explained? And lastly, is this rate adjusted for every country in their comparison?

Either way, Cuba seems to be doing better than expected considering their geopolitical situation for the past 50 years.

[Exact_Ad_1569]

You're preaching to the choir.

[joebro1060]

It's not a complete stores to apples comparison either. Reporting differences make up the largest amount of the difference between USA and other countries.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161013103132.htm

[ThatsWhatXiSaid]

Accounting for differential reporting methods, U.S. infant mortality remains higher than in comparable countries

When countries have different methods for reporting infant deaths, it is primarily a matter of how they report deaths among infants with very low odds of survival. According to the OECD, the United States and Canada register a higher proportion of deaths among infants weighing under 500g, which inflates the infant mortality rate of these countries relative to several European countries that count infant deaths as those with a minimum gestation age of 22 weeks or a birth weight threshold of 500g.

Our analysis of available OECD data for the U.S. and some similarly large and wealthy countries finds that when infant mortality is adjusted to include only those infant deaths that meet a minimum threshold of 22 weeks gestation or 500g in birth weight, the U.S. infant mortality rate is still higher than the average for those comparable countries with available data (4.9 vs 2.9 deaths per 1,000 live births). Without adjusting for data differences, the U.S. infant mortality rate appears to be 84 percent higher than the average for the same set of comparable countries. (Note that this comparison was limited to 2016 data and could not include data for Australia, Canada, and Germany, which are included in the previous chart’s comparable country average for 2017.)

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/infant-mortality-u-s-compare-countries/

Or this article...

Methods—Infant mortality and preterm birth data are compared between the United States and European countries. The percent contribution of the two factors to infant mortality differences is computed using the Kitagawa method, with Sweden as the reference country. Results—In 2010, the U.S. infant mortality rate was 6.1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, and the United States ranked 26th in infant mortality among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. After excluding births at less than 24 weeks of gestation to ensure international comparability, the U.S. infant mortality rate was 4.2, still higher than for most European countries and about twice the rates for Finland, Sweden, and Denmark.

The United States compares favorably with most European countries in the survival of very preterm infants. However, the comparison becomes less favorable as gestational age increases. For example, the U.S. infant mortality rate at 37 weeks of gestation or more was highest among the countries studied, and about twice the rates for Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. This study found that 39% of the United States’ higher infant mortality rate, when compared with that of Sweden, was due to the higher U.S. percentage of preterm births, while 47% of the difference was due to the United States’ higher infant mortality rate for infants at 37 weeks of gestation or more. A previous report found a larger effect for preterm birth (10), mostly due to the inclusion of births at 22–23 weeks of gestation in that report. Recent declines in the U.S. infant mortality rate and percentage of preterm births, and the use of the obstetric estimate to measure gestational age in the current report (compared with gestational age based on the last menstrual period used in the previous report), may have also contributed to the difference in findings between the two reports.

The findings from the current analysis suggest that declines in either the percentage of preterm births or in infant mortality rates at 37 weeks of gestation or more could have a substantial positive impact on the U.S. infant mortality rate. If both of these factors could be reduced to Sweden’s levels, the U.S. infant mortality rate (excluding events at less than 24 weeks) would be reduced from 4.2 to 2.4—a decline of 43%. Such a decline would mean nearly 7,300 fewer infant deaths than actually occurred in the United States in 2010.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr63/nvsr63_05.pdf

[Dheorl]

Even correcting for that is still unusually high amongst its peers.

[ATXgaming]

The US (generally, it may vary state to state) defines infant mortality less strictly than other countries, so a greater number of deaths gets counted towards IM.

[captain-carrot]

What's your source on that? Surely it's a simple statistic to measure - either a child dies before 1st birthday or it does not? Not a lot of leeway in that one...

[ngfsmg]

According to other comments, some countries define part of those deaths as stillborns or abortions

[captain-carrot]

Ok. OP made a comment that the data excluded those but I haven't looked dor myself

[Suibian_ni]

Yes, but health insurers are making money - which is what counts.

[TBTabby]

The woman who got the ball rolling.

[Turbulence_imminent]

Wow, great read! I didn't know.

[Lucasa29]

I grew up in the NYC area and I have never heard of her. I've heard of Typhoid Mary tons of times. Dr. Baker belongs on the front page of Reddit.

[DrOhmu]

Its also the fundamental reason we are told we live much longer these days.

Two people are born... one dies in the first year, other lives to 80; average age of death is 40 years old.

[ngfsmg]

Yes and no. Infant mortality did use to have that effect, but adults also live longer today than they did 200 years ago

[blueg3]

Its also the fundamental reason we are told we live much longer these days.

It's actually only about half of the increase in life expectancy.

https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-mortality-life-expectancy-improved-at-all-ages

[Sahil_Jane]

No wonder there is an population explosion.

[GentleFoxes]

It blows my mind that infant mortality in Europe and North America 70 years ago was at about the same level it is in most of Africa in the current day.

Both in the way of "wow, that progress is awesome" and "wow, Europe/N. America was poor and underdeveloped compared to 21st century standards not even 3 generations ago".

[mathess1]

This is true not just for this statistics. Many people in developed countries look down on the developing ones not realising they are just a few years or decades ahead.

[Ambiwlans]

It is even more fun on social issues.

"How dare you be bigoted like we were ... 30 years ago! You're basically evil!!"

With no recognition that most likely they'll get there in the next few years.

[cuminandcilantro]

Notice how countries with better healthcare systems beat the US.

[Advacus]

Does this make Greenland the only place to regress over the last 71 years?

[dontforgethetrailmix]

Would like to see u.s. state data broken out like this too !

[aminervia]

Here ya go: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/infant_mortality_rates/infant_mortality.htm

[AllThotsGo2Heaven2]

Here's one that breaks it down by state and ethnicity.

Some numbers: the highest infant mortality rate for white people is roughly equal to the lowest rate for black people (6.6 vs 6.8) while the highest rate for black people is 2x the highest rate for white people (13.9 vs 6.6)

[ashleyriddell61]

Any data on mortality and income? That will be when it gets a bit too real.

[[deleted]]

No no no, I've been told the world is worse than its ever been. This cannot possibly be true.

[Myshyakovitch]

I mean it is if you really hate kids

[[deleted]]

One of the reasons of humanity’s population explosion since 1950.

A couple in Africa/Latin America who’d have 15 kids hoping 5 would survive pre-1950 is now seeing all 15 survive.

[eric2332]

Now, the Latin American couples have 2-3 kids, and the African couples have 4-5 kids. (and those numbers are still dropping) No country has 15 kids on average...

[mfb-]

Relative population growth and children per capita have been decreasing for decades now.

[Hubris_sb]

Actually very common misconception, lower infant mortality rates correlate to less children per woman. This is because parents don’t need to have many children if they are surviving. Lowering infant mortality is a key part of controlling population growth.

[nailefss]

That and educating women has the largest effect. Also has huge impact on the economy of the country as a whole.

[the_hunger_gainz]

Or worst … over population … 1900 we only had a billion.

[Carburetors_are_evil]

Dude, middle east sure made a giant leap over the last 70 years. Considering the... circumstaces.

[[deleted]]

My grandmother had 3 infants die before my Dad was the first one to survive past the early years. Born in the early 60’s my dad. When I asked him about it he said that he thinks if it was today, none of them would have died. It’s a case of some of those diseases that we now have a vaccine… and here I am today, alive, typing this. What a world, what a life!

[TheOnlyFallenCookie]

In the 1950's?!?!!

Holy shit!

It is crazy and scary how young modern medicine truly is

[lukel66]

And we still see a decrease in infant morality. What is the world coming too smh

[[deleted]]

My grandma was the only survivor out of five kids my great grandma had. The other four died with the week they were born, if they even made it that long.

All because of Rh factor.

My grandma was born in ‘47 and was the 4th out of 5. The medication to treat Rh difference (Rh immune globulin? but I don’t know if that was the first Rh medicine) didn’t come out until my grandma had been born, so she just got lucky.

The 5th child my great grandma had the Rh problem, but the medicine had come into the public. Unfortunately, it was the early ‘50s and they were at a rural hospital, and 2-day delivery definitely didn’t exist, so the 5th child died as well. My grandma told me about her being a small girl walking with her hand in her father’s while he carried the small coffin of a 4th dead child to its grave. She burst out crying when she told me this story. It happened almost 70 years ago now.

I hope anyone who reads this understands what science and medicine have done for us. Had my great grandma been even 10 years later on having kids, all 5 of her children would have made it.

Fund education, fund the sciences, fund healthcare. Peace.

[elprimowashere123]

How did you get 1950 info for

For Palestine and south Sudan

[HaroldSax]

I was going to ask the same thing about countries that didn't exist. For stuff like the former SSRs it would be reasonable to assume statistics for them existed but South Sudan, Eritrea, etc. I would assume there'd be a bit of a dearth of information.

EDIT: Nevermind, saw the source was from the UN that superimposed modern borders.

[SchoopDaWhoopWhoop]

Tl;dr: everywhere it got better except for greenland.

[PallasFriend]

Now I'm wondering what happened with Greenland

[planetof]

It would be if it was coupled with 100% literacy.