Infant Mortality as a Social Mirror

Over the past three decades, the infant mortality rate has declined dramatically for all racial groups in the United States. Yet despite this impressive decline, powerful racial disparities persist. Over the past decade, the mortality rate among white infants fell from 11.0 to 8.2 per 1000 live births, whereas the rate among black infants declined from 21.4 to 17.2 per 1000. That substantial absolute declines can occur while racial disparities persist suggests that the causes of the decline are different from those of the disparity. In other words, the factors that drive rates down may be different from the factors . . .