FACTS ON POLICY: Infant Mortality Rate II: International Comparison

May 15, 2007

The United States has one of the highest infant mortality rates of all the industrialized nations.

The infant mortality rate (IMR) is defined as the number of deaths to infants under one year of age per 1,000 live births.

In 2005, the IMR of the United States was 6.4.

In 2004, the average infant mortality rate for the OECD nations was 5.7. (Without Turkey and Mexico, whose IMRs are 24.6 and 19.7, respectively, the OECD average was 4.3.) Worldwide, the average IMR was 52.0.

The countries with the lowest IMRs were Iceland and Japan, with IMRs of 2.8.

The United States spends about 16 percent of its GDP on health care but has a much higher IMR than Iceland, Sweden, and Japan, which spent 10 percent, 9 percent, and 8 percent of their GDP, respectively, on health care.

Figure 1
Infant Mortality Rates in Select Countries

Sources:

• United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), The State of the World’s Children 2007, “Table 1: Basic Indicators.”

• Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “OECD Health Data 2006: infant mortality rate, deaths per 1 000 live births” (June 2006).

• Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “OECD Health Data 2006--Frequently Requested Data.”

• Center for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, Health, United States, 2006 (February 2007).

Quiz Source Information:

• same as fact.