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What is Infant Mortality?

The health of an infant at birth is typically assessed by medical professionals immediately following delivery. These measures of infant health provide researchers with the ability to compare newborn health with a variety of educational, social, and health data. Researchers have measured this concept in more than one way, occasionally using different terminology to describe information that was gathered in a similar manner.
Over 22,000 infants died in the United States in 2017. The five leading causes of infant death in 2017 were:

• Birth defects.
• Preterm birth and low birth weight.
• Maternal pregnancy complications.
• Sudden infant death syndrome.
• Injuries 

The infant mortality rate is an age-specific ratio used by epidemiologists, demographers, physicians, and social scientists to better understand the extent and causes of infant deaths. To compute a given year’s infant mortality rate in a certain area, one would need to know how many babies were born alive in the area during the period and how many babies who were born alive died before their first birthday during that time. The number of infant deaths is then divided by the number of infant births, and the results are multiplied by 1,000 so that the rate reflects the number of infant deaths per 1,000 births in a standardized manner. Alternately, the rate could be multiplied by 10,000 or 1,000,000, depending on the desired comparison level.