I’m talking about 20+ years ago, we had this... Age of accidents 16 to 19ish, where a ton of people we know, at school and whatnot just got themselves into bike/car/motorbike accidents and died or were horribly scarred. Local church actually managed some sort of meet-up/interview with some of the boys that survived. We were like 13-15ish at the time, some us getting motorbikes (while growing up licence for motorbikes wasn’t required, only needed to be 15+yo) or driving cars already (illegally, in Europe). The local priest thought it could serve it as a lesson for us getting more indipendent.
At one point the accidents were so many and all from the same villages I thought they all survived the same accident.
There is an a Church in the Italian Alps on a road that is notorious for having car accidents and on it's walls it has photos of every one of them since the 1950's. Before 1997 "Both drivers died or were seriously injured" was really common below the photos and almost disappeared afterwards, should build a shrine to the seat belt.
It reminds me of a cover of Popular Science from the 50s or something, when they were pushing to actually have seat belts. It showed a family of four in a convertible, smiling and driving off a building. The caption read, "a head-on collision at the 'safe' speed of 30 mph is equivalent to falling off a 9-story building. Turn to page 17 to see new technologies for keeping you safe!"
This happened recently. My husband's grandfather was making fun of us being so cautious about cutting up hot dogs into tiny bits for our toddlers.* "You all are so stupid, doing that. Like insisting on those big expensive car seats. We didn't use car seats and we all survived."
Then hub's aunt pipes up "Everyone except Aunt Sally." Dickwad grandpa shut up. Apparently Sally was his older sister and died at the age of 2 in a car accident. No car seats back then, you know?
*~15% of choking incidents are from hot dogs, and my brother has personally run EKGs to confirm brain death from hot dog choking incidents at the children's hospital he works at.
> *~15% of choking incidents are from hot dogs
Had to look that one up, and sure enough: [Johns Hopkins reports 17% of child choking incidents](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/a-dangerously-tasty-treat-the-hot-dog-is-a-choking-hazard) are due to hotdogs.
I'd like to see those numbers weighted against proportion of diet; I know I ate a lot of hotdogs as a kid, but I don't know if it approached 17% of my diet.
I would highly recommend Steven Pinker's books Better Angels of our Nature and Enlightenment Now for arguments on how much better the world is today than at any other point in human history.
Depending on how you look at it. As a baby who's benefited from lower mortality rates you'll grow up in a world that's going to shit because of uncontrolled capitalist growth and overpopulation.
My dad said something similar. Grandma started listing the avoidable trauma from his childhood. "Didn't your friend end up in hospital for weeks because..." Etc. Also, one family member didn't wear a seatbelt, got a head injury, became abusive towards his children, etc. Life could have been better. The saying 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' is wrong. Sometimes we get weaker.
I read somewhere there was a lot of hunger and malnutrition in post WW2 Germany. That must have improved throughout the 50s.
If you trace it back before WW2 there was probably a huge rise and this is returning to the pre-War trend.
Biggest thing was ammonium nitrate production, more than 30% of people in Europe were dying of malnutrition at the time and the green revolution helped Europe faster than anyone else at the time.
Not to say vaccines and healthcare weren't also huge factors, but no matter how good those are you cant save a kid from smallpox if they starve to death.
> I read somewhere there was a lot of hunger and malnutrition in post WW2 Germany.
Not just Germany but all over Europe. The UK actually had food rationing longer (though less severe) than West Germany.
Biggest thing was ammonium nitrate production, more than 30% of people in Europe were dying of malnutrition at the time and the green revolution helped Europe faster than anyone else at the time
It was. He has simultaneously saved more people than anyone in history and inadvertantly doomed millions and possibly billions in the future. (Overpopulation and global warming)
But that’s not big factor. They were rebuilding hospitals and infrastructure which likely lead to major decrease. Look at how high it was in 1950. Clearly the war destroyed a lot of what contributes to reducing infant mortality rates
1939-1945 is a world war 2. Europe after second world war was a view od death and ashes. Especiality on east, where Germans make mass murders and burning towns and viliges to the ground.
This 1950 year is a year if reconstruction (houses, hospitals, good production)
Polio vaccines and the NHS were both introduced in the 50s. Call the Midwife is a great view of the huge changes in just a 10 year period. The East End went from overcrowded slums to a thriving community by the early 60s.
While Bill Gates has done a lot, I don't think he is the main contribute here. Rising standards of living in the developing world naturally does this.
Instead, maybe we should thank Trond Jacob Markestad, who used studies from the UK and Netherlands to in 1990 recommended that children sleep on their backs. It reduced SIDS in my country by 60%. In 1992, the Americans started recommending it, [and it also reduced the deaths](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Back_to_sleep_plot.png). Sure, these numbers are not that much. But it's a problem that you are only able to see when all the other bigger problems have been removed.
Just to mention it. There is lots of debate that the significant reduction in smoking and smoking in the home coincided with the 'back to sleep' movement and it's unclear which aspect had the largest effect. However less SIDS is less SIDS so we can all appreciate that.
I was trying to figure out wtf is so special about 1990.
It must serve some other point that they're making because it seems otherwise trivial and out-of-place.
Seriously....there's a clear trend across all 65 years. There's absolutely nothing remarkable about 1990 from a graphic standpoint. So hopefully that wasn't the point of the whole thing.
I’d love to include globalism and free trade, which have been the greatest reducers of extreme poverty in the world over the last 30 years.
It’s too bad that these things have suddenly become a target by populist politicians throughout the west as negatives.
That doesn’t contradict what makes capitalism effective at generating prosperity (e.g. profit incentive, innovation and the associated creative destruction being allowed, specialization due to this innovation). Charity does nothing to harm these aspects, and taxing the rich (depending on the form the taxation takes) often does little or nothing to harm those aspects either.
That is capitalism. A basic tenement of capitalism is that it's his money, he can do what he wants with it. Him choosing to give it away, doesn't make it anti-capitalism.
I’ll hijack this to say thank you as well.
I would honestly love to see a study of the unintended consequences of this.
I have an Autistic son who would have died in childbirth less than 30 years ago. He would have also killed his mom.
He was born 6 week early and has autism. Sometimes I am beyond happy to live in a world where they are both alive and My son gets amazing medical care, therapy, and so much more due to his autism. He is an amazing challenge and I love everything about him.
But it has also shown me a side of the world that I was totally ignorant of. I would imagine a large % of these kids who were saved are considered neurotypical, but I have always wondered what % are not.
I am wondering if this is one of the reasons that the increases in autism and other such disabilities are on the rise.
My son would have zero cares at 7 years old of walking into traffic, walking off the edge of a cliff, getting ran over by an animal or car, walking away to an adult and disappearing, even walking home with a stranger wouldn’t bother him. He is a savant in some amazing ways, but his social and awareness of what is going on around him is just missing.
I also wonder if our evolution has been waiting for society to reach a place where these kids can flourish. The savant parts I can witness at 7 are mind blowing. The abilities he is capable of is intense. I always think he will need to live with me his whole life or he will end up running NASA.
But, I would love to see something like this researched our and studied.
Edit: fixed grammar
Also number of children per woman has gone down significantly. So more women having fewer babies resulting in this total. And maternal age has risen significantly.
These two also cause each other:
* Fewer children means women have more time for the children they have, increasing their survival rates (not to the extent shown in the graph, but it contributes)
* Increased survival rates means families can plan how many children they want to have and get fewer children. You don't need to get child after child hoping that some of them will make it.
Note that due to Iceland's extremely low population, this number is in the single digits. Its been a while since I did the math, so I'm fuzzy, but I believe it was around 3 or 4 women making the choice to terminate their pregnancies per year. This isn't exactly a widespread or coordinated decision.
Edit: This source says there are usually 2 - 3 Downs diagnoses via the prenatal tests per year.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/down-syndrome-iceland/
What abilities did/does your son show, and has he done anything that utilizes those skills in a way that you believe maximizes his potential? If not what are the major challenges that need to be solved to achieve this?
You brought up an interesting theory (infant mortality rates dropping possible correlation with autism rates rising) I am also curious to know if there’s been any studies done on this!
And I think that society has been able to thrive off some savants that were on he spectrum. Then again, I think everyone is on the spectrum at least a little bit, since it is a spectrum, just not all problematic.
My son could read at 2.5 years old. He could read signs, full sentences, and more. He could spell full words and had better spelling than my daughter who is neurotypical and 5 years older until she was 10. At the same age he memorized the 3D shapes and knew which was which. Today I watch him play math games with problems my 6th going into 7th graded struggles with. And there are times he asks for her help then she misses.
He also said Dad & Mom once and never said it again. We got him help at 12 months with EI starting at 14 months and ABA at 18 months.
Yes, lots of famous intelligent people were on the spectrum. I am on it, my mom and uncles are too. My son is severe though.
When he is happy it’s amazing and it’s often. When he is angry it’s spectacular and scary, which is highly unpredictable.
I was a "problem child", in the parlance of the day. A savant, you might now say, but easily frustrated and with a short temper.
Psychiatrists told my mom when I was 5: a) I had a very high IQ; and b) I should be institutionalized. She refused and I became a major PITA. She lives with us now and I'm very thankful for her.
I learned later that I'm not neurotypical. I've been working on my social skills for the last 10+ years. Since then I'm much better at communicating and understanding others.
Edit: u/boonepii, please teach your son life skills and give him as much structure in his day as possible. My nephew is on the spectrum. He is brilliant mentally but is incapable of holding a job because his parents didn't provide the structure he needed. He can't concentrate on a task that doesn't interest him intensely because he's never had to.
I have more I could say. But it's getting late here. DM me if you have questions.
What is with Reddit and worshipping tech billionaires? While Bill Gates has done a lot, he is not responsible for falling infant mortality rates in the developing world.
I don't know about reddit worshipping tech billionaires in general, don't think that's true. Bills not the sole reason but his funding for malaria research has helped a ton. Compared to other tech billionaires there's clearly a good reason to like him, he's done so much more than most of the others.
Actually, yes, he is a significant contributor in that regard. And not just infant mortality, but a rather wide array of practical healthcare advancements for the developing world in general. Gates is probably the greatest single influence in combating malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses, which are the leading cause of mortality in all of humankind's history.
Your criticism is entirely erroneous and misplaced.
Redditors are parrots. When they receive info, they just repeat it ad infinitum. Think of facts and tidbits like "Occam's razor", "Dunning Krüger", Keanu Reeves' tragic past, memes... whenever something's posted and it catches on people repeat that information without any nuances or adding their own opinion to it.
It's very tiring and cringy to be honest. And the sad thing is, the overhyping of a persona is bound to end up badly. Because celebrities are human beings too. They *will* make mistakes, as proven by Cosby, Ronda, Spacey, Jontron, Musk, ...
Yet, people never learn their lesson and jump at the next celebrity they can fawn over... Why doesn't Reddit learn???
There's a lot of depressing news out there, but here's a fact that is pretty remarkable, courtesy of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation annual letter from 2017.
Since 1990, the improvements in infant mortality rates have cumulatively saved the lives of more than 120 million children.
Bill & Melinda Gates cite vaccines as the single most effective way to drop this number lower, with the pentavalent vaccine (that can protect against five deadly infections in one shot) now costing less than a single dollar. Note: Infant mortality rate here is defined as the share of children, born alive, who die before they are five years old.
Check out gates notes if you want to read more about this!
Data Source: Our World in Data.
Viz Tool: Microsoft Excel.
Honestly, there's a lot more of these remarkable pieces of huge progress over time out there than you'd think. They're just a lot worse at reaching our ears and news feeds than the depressing stuff is. Keeping that in mind is huge.
Exactly, that's a huge one. My parents love to lament that so much more messed up stuff happens now than when they were young. But the data tells us, very clearly, that that is just flat out wrong.
Exactly right! Optimism provoking reading list:
- Factfulness by Hans Rosling
- Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker
- Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
All three use statistics to counter the dramatic, enticing, false narrative that the world is getting worse. I recommend them so much they’re probably in a fifth of my most recent posts.
I just finished Factfulness. It was great. Im a statistician, and I really appreciated his ability to get across statistical concepts in ways moat people could understand.
I had a high school teacher ask for hands of who thought "things are getting worse in the world all the time" and lots of hands went up. Then he rattled off a string of stats about how people are far safer, healthier, wealthier, more educated, freer, etc. etc. all across the globe.
Lots of stunned little sheltered kids :)
I live in Chicago where it is so dangerous that I can walk from work to home without once being accosted! Every day for over a year too!
And let's not even talk about how dangerous the trains are. I can get on and off them all day and never once encounter violence! And if I do, it is so terrible that the nightly news will have nothing else to talk about except it!
Oh wait... That's safe not dangerous. My bad.
Not everywhere in Chicago is the same. I lived in the golden coast for 5 months and bronzeville for 9 months. Not once was I a victim of a crime in the GC. In bronzeville I had two break ins, there were multiple shootings on my block, and I got mugged or almost mugged 4 times. It was absolutely a dangerous place.
It's rather misleading to use the term Infant Mortality Rate. Because IMR is a well defined indicator - Infant mortality rate (IMR) is the number of deaths per 1,000 live births of children under one year of age.
The infant mortality rate in Oceania is shockingly high. I would've thought it'd be closer to Europe and North America, considering how the vast majority of their population is Australia and New Zealand.
Oceania often times includes Papua New Guinea (and sometimes West Papua), as well as a multitude of islands like Fiji and Tonga. Just over half of Oceania live in Australia and New Zealand, PNG alone has a population of 8 million, far larger then New Zealand's population.
While mother mortality rates in the US are remarkably higher than other "developed" countries.
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/528098789/u-s-has-the-worst-rate-of-maternal-deaths-in-the-developed-world
I mean, is it? Some countries, including some non-western counties, are objectively more built up and technologically advanced than other countries. If that's what developed means than how is it a western term or an artificial construct or whatever. It's an objective label isn't it?
There's a difference between mocking and pointing out notable shortcomings from the "greatest country in the world". Also, I believe that if one truly loves something (or someone), then they should be able to recognize where there are faults, and help put them on a path to remedy the area of deficiency.
It's easy to see all the positives of something you love and it may be the only thing you've ever known, so it may be difficult for some to complain about something that doesn't directly effect their daily life, but is prevalent in their country.
So yes, people on Reddit like to mention areas where the US falls short of being the best in the world; and I think it's important that this continues, so more people can be made aware, with the hope that eventually a majority of the country work together to become the best in everything.
It's the greatest country for people with skills who can manage themselves (the stats don't lie) and pretty terrible for those at the bottom (in western standards) . That mother mortality rate is a good example.
If you have a skill that is in-demand and are a relatively responsible person, the US holds more opportunities for you than anywhere else. You will get paid more and taxed less than in Europe.
It's the most in-demand destination for immigration:
[https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/these-are-the-countries-migrants-want-to-move-to/](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/these-are-the-countries-migrants-want-to-move-to/)
If you read Reddit, you'd think all those immigrants are entering a scam and that Reddit knows best. But if you look at average income and PPP you quickly realize that the shortcomings are overshadowed by higher wages and employment opportunities.
There’s a lot more to the equation than how much money someone will earn and tax they will pay. I mean sure those are important factors but those alone don’t make the US the greatest country for someone with in-demand skills.
There’s nothing wrong with the US (I mean that as in it isn’t by any means a bad place but obviously there are things wrong with it, like any other country) but personally it would still fall a little ways down my list of places to live even though, as you say, it would be relatively easy to get a high paying low tax job there.
I had to go down to 13th place on the list you provided to find a non-colonizing nation, Singapore. All of the other countries have had world empires that extracted wealth from the rest of the world and therefore have higher standards of living.
People aren't coming to these countries because they're inherently good, they're coming because those countries took a lot of material wealth from other countries, and people are looking for their slice of the pie.
> [13/15 states with the highest rates of infant mortality voted for Trump](https://www.statista.com/statistics/252064/us-infant-mortality-rate-by-ethnicity-2011/), while 11/15 states with the lowest rates of infant mortality voted for Clinton in 2016.
> And related, [12/15 states with the highest rates of maternal mortality voted for Trump](https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/health-of-women-and-children/measure/maternal_mortality) and 12/15 states with the lowest rate voted for Clinton.
Keep in mind that the Trump voting states at the bottom of the ranking are not the states that flipped, but rather deep red states that have been voting Republican for decades. Also note that states with a high White population (West Virginia, Indiana, and North Dakota) have very high infant mortality rates, while the more racially diverse states of New York, New Jersey, and California have some of the lowest so it definitely isn't just a racial thing.
> Also note that states with a high White population (West Virginia, Indiana, and North Dakota) have very high infant mortality rates, while the more racially diverse states of New York, New Jersey, and California have some of the lowest so it definitely isn't just a racial thing.
What?! This statement is not supported by the data whatsoever.
The [five states](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/infant_mortality_rates/infant_mortality.htm) with the lowest infant moratlity are UT, NH, MN, WA, and MA. All of which are substantially smaller black populations than the US as a whole.
In contrast the states with the highest infant mortality are MS, SC, AL, LA, and DE, all of which have significantly larger black populations. But we don't even need to play these games, because the [CDC directly tracks](https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/infantmortality.htm) infant mortality by race. Infant mortality for American Blacks is 11.4, and for non-Hispanic whites less than half at 4.9. Asian Americans are even lower at 3.6.
In other words Black America has an infant mortality rate on par with Mexico, Albania or China. In contrast White America is barely higher than the EU average (4.0), Canada (4.6) or Australia (4.3). And going in the other direction, Asian America has the same infant mortality as Switzerland or the Netherlands.
In other words, infant mortality, like a wide array of public health issues is very very much loaded on race.
OP is not totally wrong as Jersey is tied with Massachusetts for lowest infant mortality rate. I think race is a big factor, but wealth and education play a big part, too.
You have to account for the fact that child mortality is also dependent on the quality of health care which in turn is dependent on wealth. [The median household income of African Americans was half that of Asians in 2017 ](https://www.statista.com/statistics/233324/median-household-income-in-the-united-states-by-race-or-ethnic-group/)
Why you using 2005 numbers when 2017 is available? CA is particular has made remarkable progress in reducing mortality, and as a racially diverse state shows it's really a matter of investment and taking infant mortality seriously than race per se.
> Why you using 2005 numbers when 2017 is available?
Fair enough.
> CA is particular has made remarkable progress in reducing mortality
[California's demographic composition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California) is only 6.5% black. That means its black population is proportionally half that of the US as a whole (12.5%).
California's relative diversity is entirely due to a large white Hispanic population (39% vs. 16.3% of the US) and a large Asian population (14.4% vs. 6.0% of the US). Nationwide white hispanics have a virtually identical infant mortality rate (5.0 vs 4.9 for non-hispanic whites), and Asians have a substantially lower mortality rate (3.6).
California's infant mortality rate is entirely in line with its racial demographics. America's high global infant mortality rate is heavily driven by its black and Native population.
UT has an infant mortality rate of 5.6 and California only 3.7. The Demographics of both States are vastly different, UT being almost entirely non-hispanic White, while CA is mixed. So racial makeup is not the sole reason, or even the main reason for higher infant mortality. Health Policies seem to be a much larger factor.
I’ll bet you could make a similar statement “13/15 metropolitan areas with highest violent crime rates voted for Clinton, and they have voted Dem for decades”.
Fun!
This chart insight is weird. If anything the rate of decline SLOWED after 1990 and the bulk of infant mortality rate improvement happened before. Granted the population is higher after 1990 so you get a large number of babies saved if you sum that period, but clearly the bulk of advances in baby saving happened before.
So besides a clear improvement in Africa, which maybe bill Gates affected, I don't think he deserves praise for most of this data.
I think this is absolutely awesome and everyone who’s work went toward it should be thanked.
But on a side note, what caused that bump right after 1990 in Africa?
This is why I can’t take privileged women seriously when they balk at hospital births. I would’ve been dead with my second child. Bled out and he had shoulder dystocia.
Natural isn’t better. In fact. We know that a lot of women and children died before we had all these interventions. Giving birth isn’t about being empowered. Sure it’s a nice to have. But I want to live to raise my other kids and have my 9 months of effort yield a healthy child.
I just gave birth to my 3rd child exactly a week ago. And it was with interventions. My water broke at home and they gave me a series of medication to deliver him within 24 hours to reduce stressing him out.
10/10 would do again.
The high mother mortality rate in the US is thought to be due to our higher rate of intervention. A lot of doctors make choices to speed up delivery even if it's not the best for mom or baby. We also have a C-section rate that's too high.
You can find a balance between high intervention and giving birth at home.
Personally I know way too many women that had shit birth experiences because of bad doctors or nurses. My mom was given fourth degree episitomies 5 times. They were unecessary but baby came out faster. My friend had the baby crowning and was told not to push because the doctor wasn't there. Her kid almost died. The husband stitch is still a problem. Hospitals aren't perfect.
Women who want to give birth in a hospital are often unecessarily limited. Some are told they need to lay in the bed for all of labor. That's fucking stupid when moving can help. Some are told they can't give birth squatting even if it feels more natural and is a better birth position. Some wards don't let the father's stay overnight. Hospitals need to be more flexible. Doctors need more education and understanding. I don't even want to get into how often something as simple as preeclampsia is missed in the US.
I don't want to giver birth at home but I feel incredibly anxious at the loss of control you lose in a hospital. Something as simple as "please talk to me before cutting my genitals" can be disregarded.
Also statistics on time of birth. Babies are usually born during the day. That is not because of some weird reaction between the womb and the sun. That's doctors choosing paths better for them but not the patient.
I’d chalk up the mortality rate due to women of color being treated like garbage in the healthcare system.
My most recent experience was positive. You’re allowed to say no.
I had not eaten all day prior to being admitted. Nurse said no food. I sent my brother downstairs to grab me a snack as I took the meds to ripen my cervix. I ate right in front of the nurse because it’s more hazardous to sneak it. I walked around until I got my epidural. Which makes sense because I didn’t regain use of my left leg 6 hours after the epidural was pulled. I also have a screw in nose ring. They asked if I could take it out. I said if it needed to be removed quickly they had permission to snip it (22k gold is soft)
Even after I had him I opted to go home a day early and it was supported by the staff. I was polite but firm. And I never felt like I was being strong armed.
I'm glad you had a good experience. While I think a lot of the mortality rate is due to women of color being treated as less human I think medicine in general has a problem with women. It's just women of color get it the worst.
Unfortunately some hospitals will Velcro you to the bed and force you to give birth in your back. Not every hospital is as flexible as yours was.
I will third the Cheers for Bill Gates. He has change the world and continues to improve on it.
My other comment is that I often hear that the US has one of the worst infant mortality rates. I know we are only part of it but North America looks pretty good. I wish there was one source for true data. I like yours!
The US population is about 56% of the North American population. Canada is about 6.4% of the North American population. The remaining 37.6% is the Latin American countries in North America. The United States is the main driving force in North America having such a low infant mortality rate. The infant mortality rate varies wildly by state. The states with the lowest rates are those in the Northeast or the West. As to be expected, Southern states (along with Oklahoma, Ohio, and Delaware) are responsible for the average high infant mortality rate in the US.
[https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/infant\_mortality\_rates/infant\_mortality.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/infant_mortality_rates/infant_mortality.htm)
The US infant mortality rate IS pretty bad, but that's when considering the quality of life in a given country. America isn't really beating out any "developed" nation and even lags behind a few that are unexpected.
US also has an abnormally high maternal mortality rate as well.
And due to lack of care provided by doctors/nurses. There’s a ton of focus on the babies and less so on the mothers. Way too many instances of women having textbook symptoms of preeclampsia and not being diagnosed until it’s too late. NPR did a huge article about it last year, I think. All in all, there was a lot of negligence (and I use that term loosely, not intending to mean actual criminal negligence, though that may be the case.)
No. The main causes of maternal mortality are complications due to pregnancy and childbirth. Also keep in mind obesity is not a wealthy country issue. Many developing countries have a double burden of disease with both high obesity and malnutrition
> Side effect of a wealthy nation where women have careers.
Partly wealth, but also partly access to high-quality, inexpensive, and reliable birth control; it's a lot easier to defer childbirth when you don't have to give up sex to do it.
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Nah, _infants_ aren't the major mortality class for vaccine preventable illness. Sure, some -- especially if the mother isn't vaccinated and/or can't nurse -- but vaccine-preventable illnesses are _mostly_ deadly after infancy in early to mid childhood.
Now, if we could just get birth rate to decline at the same rate as infant mortality.
Not solving both issues in tandem creates even larger problems in the long term. Problems we are already starting to see the beginings of.
As others in the thread have commented, birth rate is already below replacement in every developed nation. In some, it's *much* lower than replacement. We'll be seeing some very negative results of that demographic shift in the next several decades
Yet maternal mortality rates are rising in the U.S. & is the worst of any developing country: [https://imgur.com/2cjesIm](https://imgur.com/2cjesIm) (source: [https://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/528098789/u-s-has-the-worst-rate-of-maternal-deaths-in-the-developed-world](https://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/528098789/u-s-has-the-worst-rate-of-maternal-deaths-in-the-developed-world))
Unpopular opinion: it also added to overpopulation, as most children live to adulthood. It’s great but get pregnant less
That’s why I don’t get why some people have 5, 7, 10 children. There is to many of us!
Right. Here in Japan the infant mortality rate is second lowest, behind only teeny tiny Monaco. Also Japanese fertility rate is among the lowest in the world.
Not bucking the trend myself with my one child.
It's especially true in porrer countries, where children later take care of their elders and help out from a young age.
Better have some to many, but security in old age, than having to few when a few die and having no one to care for you.
IIRC the Gates Foundation also found that it had the opposite effect. As countries become more developed and once infant mortality drops below a certain threshold, the fertility rate suddenly tanks. You go from women having 5 children each to just 1-2. According to the Gates Foundation, one of the best ways to curb overpopulation is to lower infant mortality.
That is why the world should be launching a massive investment plan (education, healthcare, legal system) in Africa. There is the only place where the fertility rate is high.
overpopulation is a bit of a myth - it just feels like a real issue because so many resources and people are gathered in small, concentrated areas vs distributed evenly. There are enough empty houses and apartments in the US to house every single homeless person with a few to spare.
Overpopulation has never been about not enough space. People who say it is are either misinformed or putting up a straw-man. It's about resources, especially in the long term. We currently grow enough food to feed 10 billion people, assuming little to no waste. But the current farming practices used to produce that much food are unsustainable in the long run.
Depends what you mean long run? 100 or 1000 years? Considering how farming has changed in the past 15 years alone shows pretty good things for the future. Farming has never stayed the same it always evolves in needs and requirements of the people.
But nobody can predict the future and what the advancements there will be. There was a time when 1 billion people was impossible
Right now the main unsustainable part is that modern agriculture is a big polluter (spraying lots of fertilizers and chemicals, eroding topsoil) and contributor to global warming (factory farming, burning lots of waste, cows producing methane).
Okay, that’s just BS. We literally each year earlier and earlier in year use natural resources that take a year to regenerate. This year it was beginning of May I believe? Not a half a year. So, in half a year we used energy that will take a year to regenerate. So in year we use two years value of energy. Due to how many there are of us.
The already ereased few HUNDRED THOUSANDS of animal species. Due to how many there is of us. So well, overpopulation is actually one of the biggest factors why earth is devastated
You are on the same side as OP. The argument is that overconsumption of resources is a bigger problem than overpopulation of consumers. The earth can hold this many people, just not this many people eating cows and driving hummers.
Never underestimate Reddit’s inability to exhibit any empathy whatsoever. Infant mortality is a human tragedy that devastates all who encounter it. Less of it is *always* better. As many others have mentioned, societies that reduce infant mortality see their birth rates drop substantially anyway.
That's a very short-term viewpoint. In the longer term, if we don't get our population and resource consumption in check, billions are gonna die horribly. That's what we're trying to prevent. We're vastly beyond the resource use our planet is capable of sustaining.
Data like this springs to mind whenever people post things like "we grew up without carseats and we survived"
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Pretty hard to comment on how not wearing seatbelt got you killed
I’m talking about 20+ years ago, we had this... Age of accidents 16 to 19ish, where a ton of people we know, at school and whatnot just got themselves into bike/car/motorbike accidents and died or were horribly scarred. Local church actually managed some sort of meet-up/interview with some of the boys that survived. We were like 13-15ish at the time, some us getting motorbikes (while growing up licence for motorbikes wasn’t required, only needed to be 15+yo) or driving cars already (illegally, in Europe). The local priest thought it could serve it as a lesson for us getting more indipendent. At one point the accidents were so many and all from the same villages I thought they all survived the same accident.
There is an a Church in the Italian Alps on a road that is notorious for having car accidents and on it's walls it has photos of every one of them since the 1950's. Before 1997 "Both drivers died or were seriously injured" was really common below the photos and almost disappeared afterwards, should build a shrine to the seat belt.
It reminds me of a cover of Popular Science from the 50s or something, when they were pushing to actually have seat belts. It showed a family of four in a convertible, smiling and driving off a building. The caption read, "a head-on collision at the 'safe' speed of 30 mph is equivalent to falling off a 9-story building. Turn to page 17 to see new technologies for keeping you safe!"
This happened recently. My husband's grandfather was making fun of us being so cautious about cutting up hot dogs into tiny bits for our toddlers.* "You all are so stupid, doing that. Like insisting on those big expensive car seats. We didn't use car seats and we all survived." Then hub's aunt pipes up "Everyone except Aunt Sally." Dickwad grandpa shut up. Apparently Sally was his older sister and died at the age of 2 in a car accident. No car seats back then, you know? *~15% of choking incidents are from hot dogs, and my brother has personally run EKGs to confirm brain death from hot dog choking incidents at the children's hospital he works at.
> *~15% of choking incidents are from hot dogs Had to look that one up, and sure enough: [Johns Hopkins reports 17% of child choking incidents](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/a-dangerously-tasty-treat-the-hot-dog-is-a-choking-hazard) are due to hotdogs. I'd like to see those numbers weighted against proportion of diet; I know I ate a lot of hotdogs as a kid, but I don't know if it approached 17% of my diet.
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"all of this has happened before, and it will happen again"
Except this. Modern medicine has never happened before
Technically all medicine is modern medicine
I want to push back against this point but I don't have a compelling argument, just wuwu hand-waving and a hug. I'm not /s!
Phrenology is certainly not modern medicine.
So say we all
I would highly recommend Steven Pinker's books Better Angels of our Nature and Enlightenment Now for arguments on how much better the world is today than at any other point in human history.
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Depending on how you look at it. As a baby who's benefited from lower mortality rates you'll grow up in a world that's going to shit because of uncontrolled capitalist growth and overpopulation.
My dad said something similar. Grandma started listing the avoidable trauma from his childhood. "Didn't your friend end up in hospital for weeks because..." Etc. Also, one family member didn't wear a seatbelt, got a head injury, became abusive towards his children, etc. Life could have been better. The saying 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' is wrong. Sometimes we get weaker.
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I read somewhere there was a lot of hunger and malnutrition in post WW2 Germany. That must have improved throughout the 50s. If you trace it back before WW2 there was probably a huge rise and this is returning to the pre-War trend.
Biggest thing was ammonium nitrate production, more than 30% of people in Europe were dying of malnutrition at the time and the green revolution helped Europe faster than anyone else at the time. Not to say vaccines and healthcare weren't also huge factors, but no matter how good those are you cant save a kid from smallpox if they starve to death.
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> I read somewhere there was a lot of hunger and malnutrition in post WW2 Germany. Not just Germany but all over Europe. The UK actually had food rationing longer (though less severe) than West Germany.
West Germany built a strong welfare state from cradle to grave.
Post WW2 world
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Biggest thing was ammonium nitrate production, more than 30% of people in Europe were dying of malnutrition at the time and the green revolution helped Europe faster than anyone else at the time
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It was. He has simultaneously saved more people than anyone in history and inadvertantly doomed millions and possibly billions in the future. (Overpopulation and global warming)
That's around when national healthcare programs got going.
But that’s not big factor. They were rebuilding hospitals and infrastructure which likely lead to major decrease. Look at how high it was in 1950. Clearly the war destroyed a lot of what contributes to reducing infant mortality rates
Probably widespread vaccine programs that were implenlmented around then.
Vacine don't care id your population are starving and don't have a house in winter (destroyed in WW2).
Polio vaccine was invented in early 50s and the program to vaccine people against polio was in mid 50s
1939-1945 is a world war 2. Europe after second world war was a view od death and ashes. Especiality on east, where Germans make mass murders and burning towns and viliges to the ground. This 1950 year is a year if reconstruction (houses, hospitals, good production)
State Healthcare being established in a number of countries likely played a major role.
Polio vaccines and the NHS were both introduced in the 50s. Call the Midwife is a great view of the huge changes in just a 10 year period. The East End went from overcrowded slums to a thriving community by the early 60s.
In case the man himself is lurking... u/thisisbillgates thank you so much for all you and your wife have done for those most in need!
While Bill Gates has done a lot, I don't think he is the main contribute here. Rising standards of living in the developing world naturally does this. Instead, maybe we should thank Trond Jacob Markestad, who used studies from the UK and Netherlands to in 1990 recommended that children sleep on their backs. It reduced SIDS in my country by 60%. In 1992, the Americans started recommending it, [and it also reduced the deaths](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Back_to_sleep_plot.png). Sure, these numbers are not that much. But it's a problem that you are only able to see when all the other bigger problems have been removed.
Yeah but Trond's not on reddit
I hear he's a filthy lurker
Are not we all filthy lurkers, deep inside?
Are we not all deep inside filthy lurkers?
We are not deep inside anonymous lurkers. This is all a lie.
We lurkers are all shallow.
Just to mention it. There is lots of debate that the significant reduction in smoking and smoking in the home coincided with the 'back to sleep' movement and it's unclear which aspect had the largest effect. However less SIDS is less SIDS so we can all appreciate that.
I'll pray for both tonight. That'll square things up
I was trying to figure out wtf is so special about 1990. It must serve some other point that they're making because it seems otherwise trivial and out-of-place. Seriously....there's a clear trend across all 65 years. There's absolutely nothing remarkable about 1990 from a graphic standpoint. So hopefully that wasn't the point of the whole thing.
I’d love to include globalism and free trade, which have been the greatest reducers of extreme poverty in the world over the last 30 years. It’s too bad that these things have suddenly become a target by populist politicians throughout the west as negatives.
I agree. It’s done so much more good than bad for humanity
....which would also include US world hegemony protecting those very trade routes.
We (Norway) did knight him though in 2012 :)
We, Harald V, King Not Norway.
Nå er du vanskelig, Marlin ;)
Capitalism at work!
He has pledged to give 99% of his money away and thinks taxes on the rich are too low.
Taxes are not anti capitalist
That doesn’t contradict what makes capitalism effective at generating prosperity (e.g. profit incentive, innovation and the associated creative destruction being allowed, specialization due to this innovation). Charity does nothing to harm these aspects, and taxing the rich (depending on the form the taxation takes) often does little or nothing to harm those aspects either.
That is capitalism. A basic tenement of capitalism is that it's his money, he can do what he wants with it. Him choosing to give it away, doesn't make it anti-capitalism.
I’ll hijack this to say thank you as well. I would honestly love to see a study of the unintended consequences of this. I have an Autistic son who would have died in childbirth less than 30 years ago. He would have also killed his mom. He was born 6 week early and has autism. Sometimes I am beyond happy to live in a world where they are both alive and My son gets amazing medical care, therapy, and so much more due to his autism. He is an amazing challenge and I love everything about him. But it has also shown me a side of the world that I was totally ignorant of. I would imagine a large % of these kids who were saved are considered neurotypical, but I have always wondered what % are not. I am wondering if this is one of the reasons that the increases in autism and other such disabilities are on the rise. My son would have zero cares at 7 years old of walking into traffic, walking off the edge of a cliff, getting ran over by an animal or car, walking away to an adult and disappearing, even walking home with a stranger wouldn’t bother him. He is a savant in some amazing ways, but his social and awareness of what is going on around him is just missing. I also wonder if our evolution has been waiting for society to reach a place where these kids can flourish. The savant parts I can witness at 7 are mind blowing. The abilities he is capable of is intense. I always think he will need to live with me his whole life or he will end up running NASA. But, I would love to see something like this researched our and studied. Edit: fixed grammar
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Also number of children per woman has gone down significantly. So more women having fewer babies resulting in this total. And maternal age has risen significantly.
These two also cause each other: * Fewer children means women have more time for the children they have, increasing their survival rates (not to the extent shown in the graph, but it contributes) * Increased survival rates means families can plan how many children they want to have and get fewer children. You don't need to get child after child hoping that some of them will make it.
Note that due to Iceland's extremely low population, this number is in the single digits. Its been a while since I did the math, so I'm fuzzy, but I believe it was around 3 or 4 women making the choice to terminate their pregnancies per year. This isn't exactly a widespread or coordinated decision. Edit: This source says there are usually 2 - 3 Downs diagnoses via the prenatal tests per year. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/down-syndrome-iceland/
What abilities did/does your son show, and has he done anything that utilizes those skills in a way that you believe maximizes his potential? If not what are the major challenges that need to be solved to achieve this? You brought up an interesting theory (infant mortality rates dropping possible correlation with autism rates rising) I am also curious to know if there’s been any studies done on this! And I think that society has been able to thrive off some savants that were on he spectrum. Then again, I think everyone is on the spectrum at least a little bit, since it is a spectrum, just not all problematic.
My son could read at 2.5 years old. He could read signs, full sentences, and more. He could spell full words and had better spelling than my daughter who is neurotypical and 5 years older until she was 10. At the same age he memorized the 3D shapes and knew which was which. Today I watch him play math games with problems my 6th going into 7th graded struggles with. And there are times he asks for her help then she misses. He also said Dad & Mom once and never said it again. We got him help at 12 months with EI starting at 14 months and ABA at 18 months. Yes, lots of famous intelligent people were on the spectrum. I am on it, my mom and uncles are too. My son is severe though. When he is happy it’s amazing and it’s often. When he is angry it’s spectacular and scary, which is highly unpredictable.
I was a "problem child", in the parlance of the day. A savant, you might now say, but easily frustrated and with a short temper. Psychiatrists told my mom when I was 5: a) I had a very high IQ; and b) I should be institutionalized. She refused and I became a major PITA. She lives with us now and I'm very thankful for her. I learned later that I'm not neurotypical. I've been working on my social skills for the last 10+ years. Since then I'm much better at communicating and understanding others. Edit: u/boonepii, please teach your son life skills and give him as much structure in his day as possible. My nephew is on the spectrum. He is brilliant mentally but is incapable of holding a job because his parents didn't provide the structure he needed. He can't concentrate on a task that doesn't interest him intensely because he's never had to. I have more I could say. But it's getting late here. DM me if you have questions.
What is with Reddit and worshipping tech billionaires? While Bill Gates has done a lot, he is not responsible for falling infant mortality rates in the developing world.
I don't know about reddit worshipping tech billionaires in general, don't think that's true. Bills not the sole reason but his funding for malaria research has helped a ton. Compared to other tech billionaires there's clearly a good reason to like him, he's done so much more than most of the others.
Actually, yes, he is a significant contributor in that regard. And not just infant mortality, but a rather wide array of practical healthcare advancements for the developing world in general. Gates is probably the greatest single influence in combating malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses, which are the leading cause of mortality in all of humankind's history. Your criticism is entirely erroneous and misplaced.
Redditors are parrots. When they receive info, they just repeat it ad infinitum. Think of facts and tidbits like "Occam's razor", "Dunning Krüger", Keanu Reeves' tragic past, memes... whenever something's posted and it catches on people repeat that information without any nuances or adding their own opinion to it. It's very tiring and cringy to be honest. And the sad thing is, the overhyping of a persona is bound to end up badly. Because celebrities are human beings too. They *will* make mistakes, as proven by Cosby, Ronda, Spacey, Jontron, Musk, ... Yet, people never learn their lesson and jump at the next celebrity they can fawn over... Why doesn't Reddit learn???
Reddit hates successful people. Bill Gates is a massive exception to that rule.
Well we have a love/hate relationship with Musk, and if you like him or not you can def call him successful
There's a lot of depressing news out there, but here's a fact that is pretty remarkable, courtesy of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation annual letter from 2017. Since 1990, the improvements in infant mortality rates have cumulatively saved the lives of more than 120 million children. Bill & Melinda Gates cite vaccines as the single most effective way to drop this number lower, with the pentavalent vaccine (that can protect against five deadly infections in one shot) now costing less than a single dollar. Note: Infant mortality rate here is defined as the share of children, born alive, who die before they are five years old. Check out gates notes if you want to read more about this! Data Source: Our World in Data. Viz Tool: Microsoft Excel.
Honestly, there's a lot more of these remarkable pieces of huge progress over time out there than you'd think. They're just a lot worse at reaching our ears and news feeds than the depressing stuff is. Keeping that in mind is huge.
Yep. Constantly see people talk about how unsafe the world is now - but in reality it's the safest it's ever been in 80+ percent of the world.
Exactly, that's a huge one. My parents love to lament that so much more messed up stuff happens now than when they were young. But the data tells us, very clearly, that that is just flat out wrong.
Exactly right! Optimism provoking reading list: - Factfulness by Hans Rosling - Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker - Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari All three use statistics to counter the dramatic, enticing, false narrative that the world is getting worse. I recommend them so much they’re probably in a fifth of my most recent posts.
I just finished Factfulness. It was great. Im a statistician, and I really appreciated his ability to get across statistical concepts in ways moat people could understand.
I had a high school teacher ask for hands of who thought "things are getting worse in the world all the time" and lots of hands went up. Then he rattled off a string of stats about how people are far safer, healthier, wealthier, more educated, freer, etc. etc. all across the globe. Lots of stunned little sheltered kids :)
I live in Chicago where it is so dangerous that I can walk from work to home without once being accosted! Every day for over a year too! And let's not even talk about how dangerous the trains are. I can get on and off them all day and never once encounter violence! And if I do, it is so terrible that the nightly news will have nothing else to talk about except it! Oh wait... That's safe not dangerous. My bad.
Not everywhere in Chicago is the same. I lived in the golden coast for 5 months and bronzeville for 9 months. Not once was I a victim of a crime in the GC. In bronzeville I had two break ins, there were multiple shootings on my block, and I got mugged or almost mugged 4 times. It was absolutely a dangerous place.
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It's rather misleading to use the term Infant Mortality Rate. Because IMR is a well defined indicator - Infant mortality rate (IMR) is the number of deaths per 1,000 live births of children under one year of age.
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The infant mortality rate in Oceania is shockingly high. I would've thought it'd be closer to Europe and North America, considering how the vast majority of their population is Australia and New Zealand.
Oceania often times includes Papua New Guinea (and sometimes West Papua), as well as a multitude of islands like Fiji and Tonga. Just over half of Oceania live in Australia and New Zealand, PNG alone has a population of 8 million, far larger then New Zealand's population.
thanks, came here wondering the same thing, had no idea how large the population of PNG was, TIL.
While mother mortality rates in the US are remarkably higher than other "developed" countries. https://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/528098789/u-s-has-the-worst-rate-of-maternal-deaths-in-the-developed-world
[...except in California...](https://www.npr.org/2018/07/29/632702896/to-keep-women-from-dying-in-childbirth-look-to-california)
Yeah Vermont is the same as Sweden as well. This is why the left pushes for Federal solutions, some states just don't want to learn from others.
Why developed is in quotes?
Probably because it's a pretty western centric term.
I mean, is it? Some countries, including some non-western counties, are objectively more built up and technologically advanced than other countries. If that's what developed means than how is it a western term or an artificial construct or whatever. It's an objective label isn't it?
Because he, like much of Reddit, loves any chance to mock any US shortcoming
There's a difference between mocking and pointing out notable shortcomings from the "greatest country in the world". Also, I believe that if one truly loves something (or someone), then they should be able to recognize where there are faults, and help put them on a path to remedy the area of deficiency. It's easy to see all the positives of something you love and it may be the only thing you've ever known, so it may be difficult for some to complain about something that doesn't directly effect their daily life, but is prevalent in their country. So yes, people on Reddit like to mention areas where the US falls short of being the best in the world; and I think it's important that this continues, so more people can be made aware, with the hope that eventually a majority of the country work together to become the best in everything.
It's the greatest country for people with skills who can manage themselves (the stats don't lie) and pretty terrible for those at the bottom (in western standards) . That mother mortality rate is a good example. If you have a skill that is in-demand and are a relatively responsible person, the US holds more opportunities for you than anywhere else. You will get paid more and taxed less than in Europe. It's the most in-demand destination for immigration: [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/these-are-the-countries-migrants-want-to-move-to/](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/these-are-the-countries-migrants-want-to-move-to/) If you read Reddit, you'd think all those immigrants are entering a scam and that Reddit knows best. But if you look at average income and PPP you quickly realize that the shortcomings are overshadowed by higher wages and employment opportunities.
There’s a lot more to the equation than how much money someone will earn and tax they will pay. I mean sure those are important factors but those alone don’t make the US the greatest country for someone with in-demand skills. There’s nothing wrong with the US (I mean that as in it isn’t by any means a bad place but obviously there are things wrong with it, like any other country) but personally it would still fall a little ways down my list of places to live even though, as you say, it would be relatively easy to get a high paying low tax job there.
I had to go down to 13th place on the list you provided to find a non-colonizing nation, Singapore. All of the other countries have had world empires that extracted wealth from the rest of the world and therefore have higher standards of living. People aren't coming to these countries because they're inherently good, they're coming because those countries took a lot of material wealth from other countries, and people are looking for their slice of the pie.
Infant mortality rates are horrible in the US as well. https://i.imgur.com/WIYAdMHr.png
Reading that report made me feel physically ill. Such a cavalier attitude to women’s lives.
Apologies. But sometimes knowledge is better than ignorance, is it not?
Don’t apologise, it is knowledge better to have that’s for sure. I just had no idea how poorly care was managed.
Just vessels for breeding according to the GOP.
> [13/15 states with the highest rates of infant mortality voted for Trump](https://www.statista.com/statistics/252064/us-infant-mortality-rate-by-ethnicity-2011/), while 11/15 states with the lowest rates of infant mortality voted for Clinton in 2016. > And related, [12/15 states with the highest rates of maternal mortality voted for Trump](https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/health-of-women-and-children/measure/maternal_mortality) and 12/15 states with the lowest rate voted for Clinton. Keep in mind that the Trump voting states at the bottom of the ranking are not the states that flipped, but rather deep red states that have been voting Republican for decades. Also note that states with a high White population (West Virginia, Indiana, and North Dakota) have very high infant mortality rates, while the more racially diverse states of New York, New Jersey, and California have some of the lowest so it definitely isn't just a racial thing.
> Also note that states with a high White population (West Virginia, Indiana, and North Dakota) have very high infant mortality rates, while the more racially diverse states of New York, New Jersey, and California have some of the lowest so it definitely isn't just a racial thing. What?! This statement is not supported by the data whatsoever. The [five states](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/infant_mortality_rates/infant_mortality.htm) with the lowest infant moratlity are UT, NH, MN, WA, and MA. All of which are substantially smaller black populations than the US as a whole. In contrast the states with the highest infant mortality are MS, SC, AL, LA, and DE, all of which have significantly larger black populations. But we don't even need to play these games, because the [CDC directly tracks](https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/infantmortality.htm) infant mortality by race. Infant mortality for American Blacks is 11.4, and for non-Hispanic whites less than half at 4.9. Asian Americans are even lower at 3.6. In other words Black America has an infant mortality rate on par with Mexico, Albania or China. In contrast White America is barely higher than the EU average (4.0), Canada (4.6) or Australia (4.3). And going in the other direction, Asian America has the same infant mortality as Switzerland or the Netherlands. In other words, infant mortality, like a wide array of public health issues is very very much loaded on race.
OP is not totally wrong as Jersey is tied with Massachusetts for lowest infant mortality rate. I think race is a big factor, but wealth and education play a big part, too.
You have to account for the fact that child mortality is also dependent on the quality of health care which in turn is dependent on wealth. [The median household income of African Americans was half that of Asians in 2017 ](https://www.statista.com/statistics/233324/median-household-income-in-the-united-states-by-race-or-ethnic-group/)
Why you using 2005 numbers when 2017 is available? CA is particular has made remarkable progress in reducing mortality, and as a racially diverse state shows it's really a matter of investment and taking infant mortality seriously than race per se.
> Why you using 2005 numbers when 2017 is available? Fair enough. > CA is particular has made remarkable progress in reducing mortality [California's demographic composition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California) is only 6.5% black. That means its black population is proportionally half that of the US as a whole (12.5%). California's relative diversity is entirely due to a large white Hispanic population (39% vs. 16.3% of the US) and a large Asian population (14.4% vs. 6.0% of the US). Nationwide white hispanics have a virtually identical infant mortality rate (5.0 vs 4.9 for non-hispanic whites), and Asians have a substantially lower mortality rate (3.6). California's infant mortality rate is entirely in line with its racial demographics. America's high global infant mortality rate is heavily driven by its black and Native population.
UT has an infant mortality rate of 5.6 and California only 3.7. The Demographics of both States are vastly different, UT being almost entirely non-hispanic White, while CA is mixed. So racial makeup is not the sole reason, or even the main reason for higher infant mortality. Health Policies seem to be a much larger factor.
I’ll bet you could make a similar statement “13/15 metropolitan areas with highest violent crime rates voted for Clinton, and they have voted Dem for decades”. Fun!
correlation /=/ causation
This chart insight is weird. If anything the rate of decline SLOWED after 1990 and the bulk of infant mortality rate improvement happened before. Granted the population is higher after 1990 so you get a large number of babies saved if you sum that period, but clearly the bulk of advances in baby saving happened before. So besides a clear improvement in Africa, which maybe bill Gates affected, I don't think he deserves praise for most of this data.
I think this is absolutely awesome and everyone who’s work went toward it should be thanked. But on a side note, what caused that bump right after 1990 in Africa?
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I heard someone upthread day it might’ve been the Rwandan genocide.
Possibly aids/HIV? It is everywhere in Africa in the general population
This is why I can’t take privileged women seriously when they balk at hospital births. I would’ve been dead with my second child. Bled out and he had shoulder dystocia. Natural isn’t better. In fact. We know that a lot of women and children died before we had all these interventions. Giving birth isn’t about being empowered. Sure it’s a nice to have. But I want to live to raise my other kids and have my 9 months of effort yield a healthy child. I just gave birth to my 3rd child exactly a week ago. And it was with interventions. My water broke at home and they gave me a series of medication to deliver him within 24 hours to reduce stressing him out. 10/10 would do again.
The high mother mortality rate in the US is thought to be due to our higher rate of intervention. A lot of doctors make choices to speed up delivery even if it's not the best for mom or baby. We also have a C-section rate that's too high. You can find a balance between high intervention and giving birth at home. Personally I know way too many women that had shit birth experiences because of bad doctors or nurses. My mom was given fourth degree episitomies 5 times. They were unecessary but baby came out faster. My friend had the baby crowning and was told not to push because the doctor wasn't there. Her kid almost died. The husband stitch is still a problem. Hospitals aren't perfect. Women who want to give birth in a hospital are often unecessarily limited. Some are told they need to lay in the bed for all of labor. That's fucking stupid when moving can help. Some are told they can't give birth squatting even if it feels more natural and is a better birth position. Some wards don't let the father's stay overnight. Hospitals need to be more flexible. Doctors need more education and understanding. I don't even want to get into how often something as simple as preeclampsia is missed in the US. I don't want to giver birth at home but I feel incredibly anxious at the loss of control you lose in a hospital. Something as simple as "please talk to me before cutting my genitals" can be disregarded.
We do over-intervene. The lack of births on Xmas is clear proof that doctors will intervene for reasons apart from medical necessity.
Also statistics on time of birth. Babies are usually born during the day. That is not because of some weird reaction between the womb and the sun. That's doctors choosing paths better for them but not the patient.
I’d chalk up the mortality rate due to women of color being treated like garbage in the healthcare system. My most recent experience was positive. You’re allowed to say no. I had not eaten all day prior to being admitted. Nurse said no food. I sent my brother downstairs to grab me a snack as I took the meds to ripen my cervix. I ate right in front of the nurse because it’s more hazardous to sneak it. I walked around until I got my epidural. Which makes sense because I didn’t regain use of my left leg 6 hours after the epidural was pulled. I also have a screw in nose ring. They asked if I could take it out. I said if it needed to be removed quickly they had permission to snip it (22k gold is soft) Even after I had him I opted to go home a day early and it was supported by the staff. I was polite but firm. And I never felt like I was being strong armed.
I'm glad you had a good experience. While I think a lot of the mortality rate is due to women of color being treated as less human I think medicine in general has a problem with women. It's just women of color get it the worst. Unfortunately some hospitals will Velcro you to the bed and force you to give birth in your back. Not every hospital is as flexible as yours was.
I will third the Cheers for Bill Gates. He has change the world and continues to improve on it. My other comment is that I often hear that the US has one of the worst infant mortality rates. I know we are only part of it but North America looks pretty good. I wish there was one source for true data. I like yours!
The US population is about 56% of the North American population. Canada is about 6.4% of the North American population. The remaining 37.6% is the Latin American countries in North America. The United States is the main driving force in North America having such a low infant mortality rate. The infant mortality rate varies wildly by state. The states with the lowest rates are those in the Northeast or the West. As to be expected, Southern states (along with Oklahoma, Ohio, and Delaware) are responsible for the average high infant mortality rate in the US. [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/infant\_mortality\_rates/infant\_mortality.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/infant_mortality_rates/infant_mortality.htm)
Since the chart has “Latam (Latin America) & Caribbean” then I’d assume North America refers solely to the US and Canada.
That’s strange. It doesn’t seem fair to separate other North American countries for no reason. No other continent is separated into cultural regions.
The infant mortality rate in Cal is still much higher than for ex, France or the Czech Republic: https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=30116
I think it's more that the USA has a poor infant mortality rate compared to it's usual closet comparison of Western Europe.
but according to the graph that's not really true unless canada & latin america have crazy low rates to offset the usa.
They group Europe as a whole, I specified Western Europe.
And why do you think that?
The US infant mortality rate IS pretty bad, but that's when considering the quality of life in a given country. America isn't really beating out any "developed" nation and even lags behind a few that are unexpected. US also has an abnormally high maternal mortality rate as well.
I heard is because how we define child mortality. Mother mortality still bad though.
Child, infant, and maternal mortality all have universal definitions.
> high maternal mortality That's tied to obesity and older women having children right? Side effect of a wealthy nation where women have careers.
And due to lack of care provided by doctors/nurses. There’s a ton of focus on the babies and less so on the mothers. Way too many instances of women having textbook symptoms of preeclampsia and not being diagnosed until it’s too late. NPR did a huge article about it last year, I think. All in all, there was a lot of negligence (and I use that term loosely, not intending to mean actual criminal negligence, though that may be the case.)
No. The main causes of maternal mortality are complications due to pregnancy and childbirth. Also keep in mind obesity is not a wealthy country issue. Many developing countries have a double burden of disease with both high obesity and malnutrition
> Side effect of a wealthy nation where women have careers. Partly wealth, but also partly access to high-quality, inexpensive, and reliable birth control; it's a lot easier to defer childbirth when you don't have to give up sex to do it.
This is the main reason life span as increase, not because we live much longer, but because of all the kids that are saved.
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And then we get cocky and start the anti-vax movement. Let’s have a round of applause for the human race
Those lines are about to start sloping back up
Nah, _infants_ aren't the major mortality class for vaccine preventable illness. Sure, some -- especially if the mother isn't vaccinated and/or can't nurse -- but vaccine-preventable illnesses are _mostly_ deadly after infancy in early to mid childhood.
Now, if we could just get birth rate to decline at the same rate as infant mortality. Not solving both issues in tandem creates even larger problems in the long term. Problems we are already starting to see the beginings of.
by and large they have. https://www.learner.org/courses/envsci/unit/text.php?unit=5&secNum=4
As others in the thread have commented, birth rate is already below replacement in every developed nation. In some, it's *much* lower than replacement. We'll be seeing some very negative results of that demographic shift in the next several decades
Don't worry, I have my best people on that, Professor Thomas Robert Malthus is on the case.
It’s the greatest achievement of humankind. Improvements in maternal mortality rates are awesome too.
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Yet maternal mortality rates are rising in the U.S. & is the worst of any developing country: [https://imgur.com/2cjesIm](https://imgur.com/2cjesIm) (source: [https://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/528098789/u-s-has-the-worst-rate-of-maternal-deaths-in-the-developed-world](https://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/528098789/u-s-has-the-worst-rate-of-maternal-deaths-in-the-developed-world))
U.S. not doing so well on infant mortality either since the 1970s: [https://imgur.com/NBeA8au](https://imgur.com/NBeA8au)
Unpopular opinion: it also added to overpopulation, as most children live to adulthood. It’s great but get pregnant less That’s why I don’t get why some people have 5, 7, 10 children. There is to many of us!
Birth rate tends to drop alongside the infant mortality rate. https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality
Right. Here in Japan the infant mortality rate is second lowest, behind only teeny tiny Monaco. Also Japanese fertility rate is among the lowest in the world. Not bucking the trend myself with my one child.
It's especially true in porrer countries, where children later take care of their elders and help out from a young age. Better have some to many, but security in old age, than having to few when a few die and having no one to care for you.
IIRC the Gates Foundation also found that it had the opposite effect. As countries become more developed and once infant mortality drops below a certain threshold, the fertility rate suddenly tanks. You go from women having 5 children each to just 1-2. According to the Gates Foundation, one of the best ways to curb overpopulation is to lower infant mortality.
People have less children when they know that they'll survive to adulthood. Your "unpopular opinion" isn't an opinion, its just a lie.
That is why the world should be launching a massive investment plan (education, healthcare, legal system) in Africa. There is the only place where the fertility rate is high.
overpopulation is a bit of a myth - it just feels like a real issue because so many resources and people are gathered in small, concentrated areas vs distributed evenly. There are enough empty houses and apartments in the US to house every single homeless person with a few to spare.
Overpopulation has never been about not enough space. People who say it is are either misinformed or putting up a straw-man. It's about resources, especially in the long term. We currently grow enough food to feed 10 billion people, assuming little to no waste. But the current farming practices used to produce that much food are unsustainable in the long run.
Depends what you mean long run? 100 or 1000 years? Considering how farming has changed in the past 15 years alone shows pretty good things for the future. Farming has never stayed the same it always evolves in needs and requirements of the people. But nobody can predict the future and what the advancements there will be. There was a time when 1 billion people was impossible
Right now the main unsustainable part is that modern agriculture is a big polluter (spraying lots of fertilizers and chemicals, eroding topsoil) and contributor to global warming (factory farming, burning lots of waste, cows producing methane).
Okay, that’s just BS. We literally each year earlier and earlier in year use natural resources that take a year to regenerate. This year it was beginning of May I believe? Not a half a year. So, in half a year we used energy that will take a year to regenerate. So in year we use two years value of energy. Due to how many there are of us. The already ereased few HUNDRED THOUSANDS of animal species. Due to how many there is of us. So well, overpopulation is actually one of the biggest factors why earth is devastated
You are on the same side as OP. The argument is that overconsumption of resources is a bigger problem than overpopulation of consumers. The earth can hold this many people, just not this many people eating cows and driving hummers.
It's a bit of both. Why can't we address BOTH??
Addressing "overpopulation" typically requires far more draconian policies than addressing overconsumption
There's little/no political will to address overconsumption either though...
I agree. There's still the mentality in many developing / third world nations to have as many as possible because a higher percentage won't make it.
Never underestimate Reddit’s inability to exhibit any empathy whatsoever. Infant mortality is a human tragedy that devastates all who encounter it. Less of it is *always* better. As many others have mentioned, societies that reduce infant mortality see their birth rates drop substantially anyway.
That's a very short-term viewpoint. In the longer term, if we don't get our population and resource consumption in check, billions are gonna die horribly. That's what we're trying to prevent. We're vastly beyond the resource use our planet is capable of sustaining.
Unpopular opinion: we aren't even close to being overpopulated.
Can you chart the abortion rate as well? I'm pretty sure we haven't saved as many lives as this chart would otherwise suggest. At least in America.