infant mortality: lifestyle vs. race, health care, etc.

More on infant mortality-- from Steve Chapman at TownHall.com...

Chapman opens with the common observation that our infant mortality numbers are so messed up, despite our affluence, technology, spending on health care, etc.-- and the (weird) inference that more government would help out.

I've often made the point about the statistics kept/measured in this area. Chapman covers another angle, starting with a nice analogy:

...not every health issue is a health care issue. The reason boxers are unusually prone to concussions is not that they lack medical insurance. Doctors may treat head injuries, but it's a lot easier to prevent them. Absent prevention, we shouldn't blame the medical industry for punch-drunk fighters.

...infant mortality is a function of many factors. The more you look at the problem, the less it seems to be correctable by a big new federal role in medical insurance -- and, in fact, the less it seems to be mainly a medical issue at all....

Our infant mortality rate is double that of Japan or Sweden. But we live different lives, on average, than people in those places. We suffer more obesity (about 10 times as much as the Japanese), and we have more births to teenagers (seven times more than the Swedes)....

Factors like these are linked to low birth weight in babies, which is a dangerous thing. In a 2007 study for the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists June O'Neill and Dave O'Neill noted that "a multitude of behaviors unrelated to the health care system such as substance abuse, smoking and obesity" are connected "to the low birth weight and preterm births that underlie the infant death syndrome."...

African-American babies are far more likely to die than white ones, which is often taken as evidence that poverty and lack of health insurance are to blame. That's entirely plausible until you notice another racial/ethnic gap: Hispanics of Mexican or Central or South American ancestry not only do consistently better than blacks on infant mortality, they do better than whites. Social disadvantage doesn't explain very much.

Nor does access to prenatal care, as the health care critique implies....we have a lot more tiny newborns. But underweight babies don't fare worse here than in Canada -- quite the contrary....