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Article: Infant Mortality
- Article from:
- Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Infant Mortality
Of all the ways in which childhood has changed since premodern times, perhaps the most significant has been the dramatic decrease in the likelihood of dying during the first year of life. Although we can only estimate levels and trends of infant mortality prior to the most recent centuries, it seems probable that through much of human history 30 to 40 percent of all infants born died before they could celebrate their first birthdays. Today, in even the most underdeveloped and high-mortality regions of the world, barely a tenth do. And in the most developed and wealthiest regions less than 1 percent of infants fail to survive their first year. The vast majority of this ...