Infant mortality rank of 29 remains after the data is adjusted for all those factors. Your pajama article basically says that comparison of US infant mortality numbers are mistaken because we count very small infants and other countries don't. And very small infants die at much higher rates. That's accurate. But the article doesn't factor out those differences to give an adjusted number.
The specific examples from the pajama article of differences were;
Other countries don't count <500g
Other countries don't count <26wks
Other countries don't count <very small length.
What you fail to understand is that listing these separate is quite deceptive. They are all the same set.
<500g infants are all <26wk and are all <very small length.
<500g infants are not, per the pajama article, counted as births in Germany, France, Canada, etc. Ok, what happens when we adjust US data to fit other countries definitions?
To think critically about how this influences infant mortality you would need to know the incidence of <500g births in the US, and then factor this out. You'd be left with data to be exactly comparable to Germany, France.
The US rate of <500g births is 0.15%, the survival is around 50%, so if you use German, French, Canadian, etc. criteria, then you'd subtract out 0.15%/2=0.075.
Unadjusted infant mortality is 0.684/100. So, 0.684 - (0.15/2) = .609/100 = 6.09/1,000.
Infant mortality adjusted to German, French definitions = 6.09
You can see where that puts us, still around #29.
cia.gov
ahrq.gov
pg 23.
Tim I would suggest not linking articles which you can not review critically. It doesn't strengthen your argument to have their flaws and misleading use of data described in detail. Also, this is not an educational thread, please come prepared to do the above calculations yourself in the future. |
