American kids are less likely to reach adulthood than foreign peers

By Anna Claire Vollers, Stateline.org

Babies and children in the United States are nearly twice as likely to die before reaching adulthood compared with their peers in other wealthy countries, according to a new study.

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The health of U.S. children has deteriorated since the early 2000s across a range of measures, researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of California, Los Angeles found. They published their findings last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study compared infant and child deaths in the U.S. with the figures from 18 other high-income nations between 2007 to 2023.

U.S. infants, children and teens were about 1.8 times more likely to die before reaching adulthood compared with young people in peer countries, researchers discovered.

For babies, the two causes of death with the biggest gaps between the U.S. and the other countries were prematurity — being born too early— and sudden unexpected infant death.

For children and teens, the biggest gaps were in firearm-related incidents and car crashes.

Since 2020, gun violence has been the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens. Firearm death rates among U.S. kids have more than doubled since 2013.

Many of the deaths from prematurity, firearms and sudden unexplained infant death are preventable, three physicians argued in an op-ed published after the new report.

Those three causes of death are up to four times more likely among Black youth than their white counterparts.

The authors estimated the mortality gap between the U.S. and other countries claimed the lives of nearly 316,000 children and teens between 2007 and 2023.

The study also found that rates of chronic conditions including obesity, early puberty, trouble sleeping, limitations in activity, depressive symptoms and loneliness all increased in children during the study period.

Overall, Americans have a lower life expectancy and worse health outcomes than residents of other wealthy countries, even though the U.S. spends nearly twice as much on health care, relative to its gross domestic product.

To improve infant and child health, the authors of the op-ed proposed antipoverty measures such as child tax credits; social media restrictions; broader health insurance coverage; more investment in primary care; and more restrictive firearm laws.

Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at [email protected].