Infant Mortality Has Jumped in Four US States

For the first time in 20 years, infant mortality rates have risen in the United States. Four states in particular have seen a significant rise, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Increasing infant mortality rates can indicate larger public health issues in our country, however, it is unclear if this year-to-year increase was an anomaly and the general decreasing trend will continue or if this will be the beginning of a longer increasing trend in infant mortality rates," Danielle Ely, a co-author on the report and health statistician at the CDC's Health Statistics Center, told Newsweek.

Overall, the U.S. recorded 5.6 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 2022, representing a 3 percent increase compared to the previous year. But what might be behind these rising mortality rates?

"Unfortunately, our data doesn't include information on specific issues that might be influencing changes in the infant mortality rate," Ely said.

However, others have speculated about what might be behind this rise.

"Every time we've measured infant mortality, it has trended down, and what's changed? Covid," Pat Gabbe, a clinical professor of pediatrics at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, told NBC News. "It's disrupted all the community support we developed that helped women access prenatal care."

But Tracey Wilkinson, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine, said politics may have also played a role.

"I look at this data, and it breaks my heart as a pediatrician, of course," she told NBC. "But I also could tell you that anybody who's in the reproductive health space could and did warn that this is the type of data we were going to start seeing when we took away the federal protections to abortion access."

Four states, in particular, saw significantly higher rates of infant mortality, Ely said.

"From 2021 to 2022, the infant mortality rate increased significantly in four states. The rate increased 13 percent in Georgia (from 6.25 infant deaths per 1,000 live births to 7.07), 30 percent in Iowa (from 3.99 to 5.20), 16 percent in Missouri (from 5.85 to 6.77), and 8 percent in Texas (from 5.29 to 5.77)."

These are still below the highest infant mortality rates in the U.S., though. In 2021, the CDC reported that Mississippi had the highest rate of infant mortality at 9.39 deaths per 1,000 live births, followed by Arkansas at 8.59.

Ely said the report represents a first step towards more sophisticated analyses in this area.

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