Black babies are still dying—and America let it happen

From Stacy M. Brown

A sweeping new analysis of U.S. mortality data over the past 70 years reveals that Black children in the United States have consistently faced significantly higher mortality rates than their White peers, with no improvement in relative disparities since the 1950s. 

The study, published March 25 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, documents more than half a million avoidable infant deaths and nearly 690,000 childhood deaths among Black Americans between 1950 and 2019. Conducted by researchers from  Harvard, Yale and other institutions, the study found that while life expectancy and overall mortality rates have improved for both Black and White Americans, the mortality gap among infants and children has widened. 

In the 1950s, Black infants died at a rate of 5,181 per 100,000 compared to 2,703 per 100,000 among White infants—an excess mortality ratio of 1.92. By the 2010s, the rate had declined to 1,073 per 100,000 for Black infants and 499 per 100,000 for White infants, yet the disparity grew to a mortality ratio of 2.15. 

“These trends show a disturbing persistence of racial inequities in childhood survival,” the authors wrote. “Despite medical advancements and public health initiatives, Black children in the U.S. are still twice as likely to die before adulthood as their White counterparts.”

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