New Infant Mortality Report

The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics has released a new report on infant mortality that has a lot of good news and some troubling numbers, too.

 The lede:

The infant mortality rate in the United States in 2004 was 6.78 infant (under 1 year of age) deaths per 1,000 live births, not significantly different from the rate of 6.84 in 2003, according to a new report released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The report, “Infant Mortality Statistics from the 2004 Period Linked Birth/Infant Death Data Set,” also finds continued racial/ethnic disparities in infant mortality rates.

Non-Hispanic black women had the highest infant mortality rate in the United States in 2004 – 13.60 per 1,000 live births compared to 5.66 per 1,000 births among non-Hispanic white women. Women of Cuban ethnicity in the United States had the lowest infant mortality rate of 4.55 per 1,000 live births.

Download the whole report here. If you have a question about the report let us know.

Historical infant mortality data beginning in 1950 is located here.