Infant Mortality

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Infant mortality can be defined as the death of a child under the age of one. Infant mortality can be due to an array of factors ranging from accidental deaths to deaths due to harm inflicted on the child. In the United States data has shown that two-thirds of infant deaths occur before the infant is even 28 days old which is called neonatal mortality. One-third of the remaining deaths occur between 28 days and under 1 year old. Neonatal mortality is mainly attributed to causes relating to short gestation and low birth weights. Things such as SIDS, congenital malformations and unintentional injuries are causes that are considered post neonatal.
The infant mortality rate for the United States as of 2011 was 23, 910 deaths, this is 6.05 deaths per 1,000. Although the infant mortality rate has decreased since 2005 it is still fairly high, especially for a first world country. The sad truth is although there are ways to prevent infant mortality it is still occurring very frequently. A variety of different reasons can be attributed to infant mortality. I chose to look at why infant mortality rates are so high in the United States as well as how infant mortality varies among races. Some of the major causes of infant mortality in the United States are as followed maternal care, socioeconomic status, and race.
Currently the United States is 169 out of the total 224 in infant mortality compared to other countries, with 1 being the worst. As stated before there are ways that we can prevent infant mortality so that it is less common. Being a first world country we have a variety of resources to help prevent infant mortality. Some of the ways that we can reduce infant mortality is by providing proper care for the infant during pregnancy, pr...

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...to find ways to reduce it even more. Many of the reasons for infants being born with problems that cause infant mortality are due to things that can be prevented. Good maternal care is one of the biggest ways to prevent infant mortality.
One of the biggest ways infant mortality affects the population is by risk of overpopulation. With the decrease infant mortality the world runs a risk of overpopulation. The more infants that survive past their first birthdays and become adults the more people we have in the world and the more resources we are using. One of the positive things with infant mortality decreasing is that we will have many youth for the future. If our infant mortality rates were increasing rather than decreasing it could cause a problem later in life. If we don’t have a children that will later become adults this could cause issues for us later in life.

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