The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel peels away a lot of layers of awful to tell the story of high infant mortality in Milwaukee, and in one economically depressed zip code in particular.
In Milwaukee, one baby under the age of 12 months dies for every 95 who live, making it one of America's most fatal cities for infants. A generation ago, Milwaukee was one of the safest.
That's Milwaukee's infant mortality in the context of the United States. And the United States is not doing too well in the context of the world:
The U.S. slid from 12th best in the world in 1960 to 30th in 2005, according to rankings from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a broader set of 196 nations tracked by UNICEF, the U.S. has fallen to 45, where it ties with Montenegro and Slovakia. It lags all of western and eastern Europe, all of developed Asia, as well as Belarus and Serbia. It's only narrowly better than Bosnia and Bulgaria.
The article details how "Infant mortality is the ultimate misery index"; according to the World Health Organization, "We can see that children in the poorest 20% population are twice as likely to die before their first birthday compared to children in the richest 20% population." Race is a factor, but not the only one. While "Even black mothers in professional occupations have higher infant mortality rates than poor whites," infant mortality is much higher among poor whites than wealthy ones.
What it pretty much boils down to is that when you have increasing poverty and increasing income inequality and declining median wealth, it's hard to put the brakes on infant mortality, and you fall behind Belarus and Serbia.