The disparity between Black and White Americans has been significant across various aspects of life. Black Americans have historically experienced lower wealth, income, and education levels while also facing higher mortality rates, particularly in childhood.
A new report published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine titled “Excess Mortality Rate in Black Children Since 1950 in the United States: A 70-Year Population-Based Study of Racial Inequalities” highlights a concerning trend: since 1950, Black infants and children in the United States have consistently died at twice the rate of their White counterparts.
This alarming pattern has resulted in over 5 million preventable deaths. Experts suggest that systemic issues, including lack of access to healthcare, economic inequalities, and racial disparities, contribute to this ongoing crisis.
According to the Eurasia Review, researchers gathered data from death certificates between 1960 and 2019 obtained from the CDC and death counts between 1950 and 1959 obtained from the Vital Statistics reports published by the Census Bureau. They calculated annual crude and age-standardised mortality rates, life expectancy, and years of life lost for Black and White Americans for every year in the study period.
According to the report, gaps in absolute life expectancy and age-standardized mortality between Black and White Americans decreased over the 70-year period beginning in 1950, but relative mortality in infants and children increased during this same period. The mortality rates in the 1950s for White and Black infants were 2703 and 5181 deaths per 100000 persons, respectively, for an excess mortality ratio of 1.92 (95% CI, 1.91 to 1.93). In the 2010s, the mortality rates were 499 deaths per 100000 persons in White infants and 1073 deaths per 100000 persons in Black infants, for an excess mortality ratio of 2.15 (CI, 2.13 to 2.17). A total of 5.0 million excess deaths of Black Americans (including 522617 infants) could have been avoided during these 7 decades if their mortality rates were equal to those of White Americans.