Infant Mortality, Income, and Cities

The United States has a wicked high infant mortality rate compared to the rest of the industrialized world. Possible reasons: better reporting in the US, a more diverse population in the US, and a lack of universal health care. All those things are true.



Another possible reason is that we have a lot of poor people in the States, relative to comparable nations. So a couple of researchers at NYU and Boston University decided to put that last assertion to the test. In the January issue of the American Journal of Public Health (subscription req'd; here's the abstract) they try something kinda interesting. Instead of looking at national stats, they looked at cities. The researchers chose New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo. That controls for the heterogenous population problem (the big cities all have that) and magnifies the income disparities. The cities all had good medical care, if you can get it. Results:

In Manhattan, for both periods, we found an association (.05% significance level) between income and infant mortality. In Tokyo, for both periods, and in Paris and London for period 1, we found none (5% significance level). For period 2, the association just missed statistical significance for Paris, whereas for London it was significant (5% level).



Conclusions: In stark contrast to Tokyo, Paris, and London, the association of income and infant mortality rate was strongly evident in Manhattan.

Gotta get us some of that there health care.



Infant mortality is in many ways a marker for the generally crummy existance of the people it targets. If your kids are dying, the rest of your life probably has problems, too. Disconnecting health care from income would alleviate some of that suffering. Less suffering = better city.