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Comment by auntjemima | Hacker News Reader

I liked that talk -- but I've read that infant mortality rates are a misleading indicator and I really want to know what Mr. Rosling think about the subject. The U.S. brings far more at risk kids into the world and so the statistic is deflated. Because those at risk kids are way more likely to die in the first year (instead of in the womb).

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Another factor to consider is that people of african descent tend to have more low birthweight babies than other groups. Low birthweight babies die more, regardless of the medical system. African descended people are common in the US, Brazil and Caribbean, but not so much in Europe.

But it isn't really a fault of the medical system or development process, just genetic/hereditary bad luck.

I'd suggest the trend lines on his charts are more meaningful than individual bubbles.

Really? From research I have done in the past, I never noticed any discrepancy in infant mortality between African Americans and white Americans in the United States.

Remember where you learned this? I'd be interested to learn more.

Newspaper article, most likely, I don't remember exactly. However, a quick google search for "low birth weight race" yields:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5127a1.htm#tab1

Here is another quirk of the measurement system I just discovered while googling. Low birthweight rates increase with income (at least in Brazil):

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118696841/abstrac...

" but not so much in Europe."

Ummm, not so much. France at least has loads of people of African descent - I would think the percentage must be around about the same as that for the US, just by eyeballing what I see on the street in Paris, Marseille, Lille etc.

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