Infant Deaths Rise for 1st Time Since ’58
The infant mortality rate in the United States has increased for the first time in 44 years, government researchers said Wednesday.
The increase is primarily a result of birth defects and premature births associated with older women having babies and the growing use of fertility drugs that produce multiple births, the researchers said.
Overall life expectancy continued to grow, however, reaching an all-time high of 77.4 years, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.
The preliminary version of the report indicated that there were 27,977 infant deaths nationwide in 2002 -- the most recent year for which data are available -- up from 27,568 in 2001, out of about 4 million births each year. That translates to a rate of seven deaths per 1,000 live births in 2002, compared with 6.8 the year before.
Until 2002, the rate had declined or remained steady every year since 1958.
The increase may be a one-time blip in the data, however, because early data for 2003 suggest that the rate will drop again, CDC officials said.
Data released in December by the CDC showed marked changes in the profile of women giving birth as they postponed families in favor of careers. Pregnancies among teens dropped 30% in the last decade, while births among women ages 35 to 44 were at the highest levels in three decades.
Older women have a significantly increased risk of bearing children with birth defects and of having premature births.
Many older women also have trouble conceiving and have turned to artificial forms of conception, which increased the rate of multiple births by 400% between 1980 and 1998.
More than half of all multiple births are preterm, and the infants have low birth weights.
“Factors such as low birth weight, preterm births and multiple births all increase the risk of infant death,” said Edward Sondik, director of the health statistics center.
“These figures reinforce the importance of addressing prematurity,” said Dr. Nancy Green, medical director of the March of Dimes. “Prematurity is the leading cause of death in the first month of life, and the rate of babies born too soon is now at a historic high of 12.1%, up 29% over the last two decades.”
At the other end of the spectrum, life expectancy in the United States increased for men and women and for African Americans and whites.
There were declines in mortality for most of the leading causes of death. The mortality rate for heart disease fell 3%, stroke fell nearly 3%, accidents and unintentional injuries dropped nearly 2% and cancer fell 1%.
The sharpest decline was in homicides, which were down 17%. That number had increased dramatically in 2001, however, because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Excluding the Sept. 11 deaths, the decrease was 3%, which continued a decline that began in 1991.
Increases in mortality occurred for Alzheimer’s disease (up 5.8%), influenza and pneumonia (3.2%), high blood pressure (2.9%) and blood poisoning (2.6%).
