US has the highest rate of child deaths among 16 of the richest countries, according to major global study

The number of infant mortality rates in the United States is rising, with America having the highest juvenile mortality rate in the world.

Researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University examined CDC mortality data for the US and Human Mortality Database (HMD) data from 16 “comparison” countries between 1999 and 2019 – and 2020 to 2022, where available.

This included deaths of children under one year old up to and including 19 years old.

The study Between 1999 and 2019, the U.S. recorded 413,950 excess deaths among children ages zero to 19. That’s an average of 19,710 deaths per year and the highest number of any country surveyed.

And the number of deaths among 15- to 19-year-olds increased by almost 10 percent from 2009 to 2019.

Researchers attribute America’s higher death rates to easier access to guns and increased use of illegal drugs such as opioids.

The above shows the youth mortality rate for 15- to 19-year-olds in the US (orange line) compared to 16 countries (gray lines) and the average of those countries (dark blue line)

The researchers also concluded that nearly 20,000 additional deaths among young people each year during the study period would not have occurred if the U.S. had had the average death rate of the 16 comparison countries.

More than half of these excess deaths involved infants, reflecting the disproportionately high infant mortality rates in the US.

The excess deaths were calculated by multiplying the difference between the US death rate and the average death rate of the comparison countries by the US population.

The comparison countries include: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

The majority of the excess deaths were infants: 57 percent.

Separate figures from the National Center for Health Statistics show that U.S. infant mortality rose in 2022 for the first time in more than two decades. There were 19,930 infant deaths in 2021 and 20,540 in 2022.

Overall, the total infant mortality rate rose from 5.44 infant deaths per 1,000 births to 5.6 infant deaths per 1,000 births, the first annual increase since 2001 and 2002.

A 2024 study published in JAMA Pediatrics found that 15- to 19-year-olds accounted for 26 percent of excess infant deaths.

The chart shows how each country in the G7, an informal grouping of seven of the world’s advanced economies, fared in international life expectancy rankings each year between 1950 and 2020. The US fell from 13th to 53rd place.

The age groups one to four, five to nine and ten to fourteen years made up smaller percentages, ranging from four percent to 7.5 percent.

The age group that saw the largest increase between 2009 and 2019 was the 10 to 19 age group, with the percentage rising from 27.5 percent to 36 percent.

Men accounted for the largest share of excess deaths, at 61 percent.

Boys suffered more from fatal injuries. Suicides, homicides and fatal drug overdoses were also the largest contributors to the total number of deaths. Researchers attributed this to easier access to guns and opioids.

Although the researchers did not specify death rates for each country, the overall trend among comparable countries has been downward since 1999. Although the death rate in the US also declined, it began to rise for 10- to 14-year-olds around 2009.

And the percentage of children between the ages of 15 and 19 started to increase around 2013.

According to the Children’s Hospital Association, children’s hospitals in the U.S. saw a 166 percent increase in visits for suicide attempts and self-harm among children ages five to 18 between 2016 and 2022.

Nearly 2 million adolescents attempt suicide each year and approximately 25 percent of child deaths are from suicide, making it the second leading cause of death for children.

Data from the CDC shows that youth suicide increased by 62 percent between 2007 and 2021.

Experts attribute the increase to psychological problems. According to the Office of Population Affairs, half of all American adolescents have suffered from a mental disorder, such as anxiety, depression and eating disorders, at some point in their lives.

When it comes to firearms, gun deaths in the US have increased and America has the highest death rate among children and teens.

CDC data shows that nearly 19,700 children ages 17 and under were killed by firearms between 2012 and 2022.

And while child deaths from firearms began to decline between 2017 and 2019, they rose sharply at the start of the pandemic through 2022, from 2.4 per 100,000 children under 17 in 2019 to 3.5 per 100,000 in 2022.