02 April 2007

'Anglo-American' countries failing on child mortality

A group of countries including the USA, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand - all singled out for criticism by UNICEF as far back as 1993 for their records on child neglect - record worse rates of child mortality than other wealthy nations, new research from the University of Dundee has shown.

An investigation by researchers in the University’s School of Accounting & Finance, led by David Collison, also showed that each of these countries had seen a marked worsening of their child mortality rankings since 1960. The study also found a very strong link between child mortality and income inequality.

"What our findings suggest is that systemic sociopolitical factors are important in determining infant mortality rates," said Mr Collison.

"We have reported two particularly striking features of the data which relate to the countries first criticised in the 1993 UNICEF report: firstly, as a group, they have the highest child mortality figures amongst the countries whose data have been analysed, and secondly their ranking, when judged by this measure relative to the other countries, has markedly declined over recent decades."

The study found a very strong association between income inequality and under-five child mortality amongst the wealthier OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries.

The best performing countries among the 24 included in the research were the Scandinavian nations and Japan.

"Within this group of wealthy nations, we found the highest child mortality figures were to be found in those `Anglo-American’ countries which attracted criticism in 1993 in the UNICEF study,” said Mr Collison.

"Furthermore, since 1960, the relative ranking of these countries has markedly worsened relative to the others."

An important finding of the Dundee research was that even when the United States was excluded from the analysis, there was still a strong statistical association between the income inequality figures and the child mortality rates. It had previously been suggested that this would not be the case because of the disproportionate influence of the exceptionally high income inequality and poor child health in the USA.

The results of the Dundee research are published in the Journal of Public Health. The researchers drew on data in UNICEF’s annual "State of the World’s Children" reports.

The paper was published in the Journal of Public Health.

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