
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 10, 1995                   TAG: 9507100132
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune|
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

U.S. INFANT MORTALITY RATE STILL HIGH

Teen-age pregnancies and out-of-wedlock births are helping keep America's infant mortality rate above that of other industrialized countries, researchers reported Sunday.

Although America's overall infant mortality rate dipped to just below eight deaths per thousand live births last year, said the National Center for Health Statistics, the country ranks behind at least 20 countries worldwide.

The decline "would have been greater if not for a rising number of out-of-wedlock births,'' said Gopal Singh, the lead researcher. ``And infants born to teen-age mothers are at increased risk.''

Teen pregnancies, which number 500,000 a year, and births to unwed mothers are often compounded by the risk factors of poverty, substance abuse and poor education, Singh said.

Singh found that black infants in the United States were more than twice as likely as white infants to die - a figure he said was unlikely to decline in the near future.

``Both blacks and whites have made significant gains, but the relative position of blacks hasn't improved,'' Singh said. ``The relative poverty situation has worsened over time, the socioeconomic gap ... has widened.''

His study appears in the July issue of the American Journal for Public Health. It reported that the United States slipped from its 1960 worldwide ranking of 12 for low infant mortality rates to 23 in 1988. It has improved slightly since, but not much. Singh said he did not know last year's exact rating.

The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the developed world: 6.1 percent of American mothers are between 15 and 19. The United Kingdom has 3.3 percent, Sweden 1.3 percent and Japan 0.4 percent.

Sweden and Denmark reported higher rates of out-of-wedlock births than America, but researchers speculated that those births may not be as closely associated with the other risk factors. Researchers also speculated that the success of other industrialized countries in keeping infant mortality down might be because of more uniform access to maternal health care.

by CNB