The United States has become “the most dangerous of wealthy nations for a child to be born into,” according to a study in Health Affairs.

Mortality in the US has been higher than in peer nations since the 1980s.

From 2001 to 2010 the risk of death in the US was 76 percent greater for infants and 57 percent greater for children ages 1–19.

During this decade, children ages 15–19 were eighty-two times more likely to die from gun homicide in the US.

Over the fifty-year study period, the lagging US performance amounted to over 600,000 excess deaths.

Policy interventions should focus on infants and on children ages 15–19, the two age groups with the greatest disparities, by addressing perinatal causes of death, automobile accidents, and assaults by firearm. [Chart source: Wikipedia Commons] Posted in: Infographic of the day