Death Rates in The 20th Century - Improvements in Public Health

Improvements in Public Health

During the 20th century, an enormous improvement in public health led to an overall decrease in death rates. Infant mortality rates and maternal mortality rates have dramatically decreased. In the early 1900's, 6-9 women died in pregnancy-related complications for every 1000 births, while 100 infants died before they were 1 year old. In 1999, at the end of the century, the infant mortality rate in the United States declined more than 90% to 7.2 deaths per 1000 live births. Similarly, maternal mortality rates declined almost 99% to less than 0.1 reported deaths per 1000 live births.

There are a variety of causes for this steep decline in death rates in the 20th century:

• Environmental interventions

• Improvement in nutrition

• Advances in clinical medicine (sulfonamide in 1937, penicillin in the 1940's)

• Improved access to health care

• Improvements in surveillance and monitoring disease

• Increases in education levels

• Improvement in standards of living.

Despite these tremendous decreases in infant mortality and maternal mortality, the 20th century experienced significant disparities between minority death rates compared to death rates for white mothers. In the 1900's, black women were twice as likely to die while giving birth compared to white women. Towards the end of the 20th century, black women are three times as likely to die while giving birth. This disparity is often cited as a lack in stronger Health care in the United States.