10 States with Highest Infant Mortality Rates

Published on May 2, 2015 at 4:04 pm by Nina Zdinjak in Lists, News

If you’ve heard that the US is among the countries that have a high infant mortality rate then maybe you have wondered which are the states with highest mortality rates in the US. You’ll discover which those states are in our list below, but before that, let’s say something more about this serious matter. According to the CIA’s World Factbook, the US is in 169th place by the number of deaths of infants under one year old, per 1,000 live births. The US had 6.16 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 2014. If we compare this rate to the one that has the first country on this list – Afghanistan with 117.23 infant deaths – then the US infant mortality rate doesn’t seem that high. But if we choose to look at the more detailed picture, pretty soon we will realize that the US has a very high infant mortality rate when compared to other developed countries. In 2010, Finland and Japan had 2.3 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, while the US had 6.1. That is more than twice as much. Not to mention the 24 developed countries that all had a lower infant mortality rate than the US in 2010. It is very strange that such a developed country as the US has an infant mortality rate that high.

Infant mortality rate is frequently used as an indicator of the level of health in a country or a state; but, this is not the only indicator – when measuring the level of health it can also be considered average life expectancy. With that in mind, maybe you would be interested to compare this list below with our other list of 10 states with shortest life expectancy, and see if there are any matches. Are the states with the highest infant mortality rates also the ones with the shortest life expectancy; and, if they are – are they really the states with the lowest level of health? Also don’t forget to check out our article about the 10 most beautiful states in the US.

This comparison is quite interesting if we look at the other end of the spectrum – Monaco is a country with the highest life expectancy in the world (89.63 years) and it is also a country with the lowest infant mortality rates in the world, according to estimates made in 2014 (World Factbook). Monaco has only 1.81 infant deaths per 1,000 live births. So, it seems that health really does play an important role in these rankings. But, probably, we can all agree that the level of health in one state or a country is very hard to determine, since many factors must be considered. That’s why this list is only a list of states with highest infant mortality rates, and not the list of states with the lowest level of health.

Even though we are not ranking the states by the level of health, with this list we are certainly revealing some health problems in those states that should be seriously examined. We hope that the US will work hard on finding the solution for this crucial issue that casts a shadow on its epithet – “developed country”.

For creating this list, we’ve used statistical information from Statista 2014. And, finally, here is the list of those unfortunate states with highest infant mortality rates: