A study by University researchers has found that only one U.S. demographic — highly educated white mothers — is likely to reach the 2020 goal infant mortality rate, six deaths per 1,000 live births.

Despite equivalent educational backgrounds, authors of the study Shondra Loggins and Flavia Cristina Drumond Andrade, research data analyst and associate professor in the department of kinesiology and community health saw that there was still a disparity in the infant mortality rate between black and white mothers. 

They predict that the infant mortality rates for white women with at least a high school education would drop from 4.1 to 3.9 deaths per 1,000 live births by 2020. However, for black women with an equivalent education, the rate is more than double that, with an estimated drop of 9.4 to 8.3 deaths per 1,000 live births. 

Even when looking at white women with a lower educational attainment, the projected infant mortality rate was half of that of similarly educated black women seeing rates of 6.4 and 12.5 deaths per live births.

Andrade said there were a variety of other socioeconomic and health stressors that could contribute to the disparity. Loggins added that it is necessary to examine racism and discrimination as possible sources of stress that could contribute to the higher infant mortality rate of black women, but these factors are difficult to measure.

Karen Tabb, assistant professor in the school of social work, said that it is important to look at factors over the course of a person’s life. 

“In the case of infant mortality, there’s long-standing literature and documentation on differences by race in that races in ethnic minority groups experience a greater burden of excess deaths.”

Tabb said the weathering hypothesis, which applies to black women, states that over the course of a woman’s lifetime she will experience more stressors and more adversity, like discrimination, and these factors build up into a cumulative disadvantage. 

When looking at other developed countries like Japan and Norway, which, according to the CIA World Factbook, have infant mortality rates of 2.13 and 2.48 deaths per 1,000 live births, the U.S. still has a higher overall infant mortality rate.

“To think the U.S. has so much money, in terms of wealth and GDP, we would expect better health outcomes of the population,” Andrade said.

Loggins and Andrade are currently working on studies to explore other factors that may explain the infant mortality rate disparity between black and white women. These factors include emotional support, financial stability, neighborhood characteristics, religion, culture and health behaviors, such as substance abuse and smoking.

“The racial disparity exists. It persists even though we looked at factors such as marital status, education attainment, and access to care,” Loggins said. “And even though those things partially explain this disparity, they didn’t fully explain it. So we wanted to broaden that study to look at other factors that may account for the difference in rate between blacks and whites.”

There are a variety of policies that could be implemented to continue to close the gap between black and white people and further decrease the infant mortality rate overall.

“I think affordable health care is definitely a step in the right direction,” Loggins said. “Just providing that access to resources, we should see an improvement, a further improvement — because we have seen a decline in infant mortality rates.”

Andrade said that lowering the infant mortality rate is something to strive for, but not necessarily realistic right now.

“I think it is a good thing that the Healthy People 2020 has this goal that we would eliminate these health disparities by 2020, but we are already in 2014,” Andrade said. “We have to be understanding that there are decades of disparities in health and it may take more decades to address this. I think it is a noble goal, but maybe not a practical one in the short term.”

Edward can be reached at [email protected].