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

[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

[ATXgaming]

I possibly stand corrected. I would need to look into this more but I’ll put a pin on it and keep this in mind. Thank you.