The infant death rate in the United States is rising and the country has the highest youth mortality rate in the world.
Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University examined CDC mortality data for the US and Human Mortality Database (HMD) data from 16 “comparison countries” between 1999 and 2019, and between 2020 and 2022, when they were available.
They included deaths of children from less than one year to 19 years of age.
He study Between 1999 and 2019, there were 413,950 excess deaths in the U.S. among children ages zero to 19 years, an average of 19,710 deaths per year and the highest among the countries included.
And deaths among young people ages 15 to 19 increased almost 10 percent between 2009 and 2019.
Researchers attributed higher death rates in the United States to easier access to guns and increased use of illicit drugs such as opioids.
The above shows the youth mortality rate for ages 10 to 14 in the US (orange line) compared to 16 countries (gray lines) and the average for those countries (dark blue line).
The above shows the mortality rate for 15- to 19-year-olds in the US (orange line) compared to 16 countries (gray lines) and the average for those countries (dark blue line).
The researchers also concluded that each year during the study period, nearly 20,000 additional youth deaths would not have occurred if the United States experienced the average death rate of the 16 comparison countries.
More than half of these excess deaths involved infants, reflecting the disproportionately high infant mortality rates in the United States.
Excess deaths were calculated by multiplying the difference between the US death rates and the average death rate of the comparison countries by the US population.
Comparison countries included: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Most of the excess deaths occurred among children: 57 percent.
Separate figures from the National Center for Health Statistics showed that infant mortality in the United States rose in 2022 for the first time in more than two decades. There were 19,930 infant deaths in 2021 and 20,540 in 2022.
Overall, the all-cause infant mortality rate increased from 5.44 infant deaths per 1,000 births to 5.6 infant deaths per 1,000 births – the first year-on-year increase in the rate since 2001 to 2002.
Following infants, the 2024 study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, found that youth ages 15 to 19 accounted for 26 percent of excess deaths.
Those in the age groups one to four, five to nine and 10 to 14 made up smaller percentages, ranging from four to 7.5 percent.
The age group that saw the largest increase from 2009 to 2019 was children between 10 and 19 years old, rising from 27.5 percent to 36 percent.
And men accounted for the majority of excess deaths, at 61 percent.
Children experienced higher rates of fatal injuries. Suicides, homicides and fatal drug overdoses were also major contributors to the overall excess deaths. Researchers attributed this to easier access to guns and opioids.
While the researchers did not specify the death rates for each country, the general trend among comparable nations has been declining since 1999. While it was also declining in the U.S., around 2009 the death rate for children aged 10 to 14 began to increase.
And the rate for children aged 15 to 19 began to rise around 2013.
The chart shows how each country in the G7, an informal grouping of seven of the world’s advanced economies, fared in international life expectancy rankings each year from 1950 to 2020. The United States fell from 13th to 53rd place.
Another 2023 study concluded that 1 million deaths could be avoided each year in the United States if death rates in that country were similar to those in other wealthy countries.
The researchers looked at the all-cause mortality rate by population size since the 1930s in nearly two dozen peer countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Australia and 17 European countries.
They found that despite the US being the richest country, it has suffered more deaths per capita than any of the other 21 nations since about 1980, which have reached “unprecedented levels” in recent years.
The study noted that the opioid and fentanyl epidemic, gun violence and obesity-related deaths, which have been exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, are the reasons why the United States is an outlier.
