Nicholas Kristof has an interesting piece on infant mortality rates and how the U.S. is actually behind countries like Cuba and Singapore.

I do however disagree with his knee jerk reaction that spending more money on "healthcare" or anti-poverty programs will resolve the problem. Who knows how much this has to do with illegal immigration here or underreporting from other countries? Perhaps it's easier to treat infant diseases in other countries, or there are fewer of them because of their more homogeneous population. Maybe more babies are brought to term here, even with serious health issues, instead of aborted - just throwing out ideas. I'm not claiming that we have to have the lowest rate in the world, but I would dig a bit deeper into the reason before proposing solutions.

Also, I can't stand how he picks and chooses facts to make his argument. First, he mentions that in 2002 it appears that the annual U.S. infant mortality rate increased for the first time since 1958 - from 6.8 per 1000 to 7.0 per thousand. Here he uses information he supposedly has from the Centers for Disease Control.

However, according to the CIA World Book which he quotes as a source for his numbers for other countries to which he compares the U.S., the U.S infant mortality rate is as follows:

2001 - 6.76 per thousand
2002 - 6.69 per thousand
2003 - 6.75 per thousand
2004 - 6.63 per thousand

You can't compare apples to oranges Mr. Kristof.

He then goes on to say that "for all their ruthlessness, China's dictators have managed to drive down the infant mortality rate in Beijing to 4.6 per thousand; in contrast, New York City's rate is 6.5." Even ignoring the fact that the Chinese data may or may not be reliable, the number for China overall is 25.28 per thousand.

Hey, but look at it this way - a baby born here is still about 8 times more likely to survive their first year here than in the world at large. (See here for country by country and global stats).