Rising Child Mortality Rate Hits Black Children Harder

By Jennifer Porter Gore | Word In Black

Overview: Data shows that from 2013 to 2020, Black children are far more likely to die from things like drug overdoses, homicide or accidents than white children — a sharp reversal of a disparity that had been narrowing.

(WIB) – Over the past decade, the U.S. has witnessed an growing, alarming trend: higher death rates among children. Data show preventable deaths — including homicide, drug overdoses, motor vehicle accidents and suicide — are driving the increase. 

Now, a new study shows Black youths are bearing the brunt of the increase in deaths of youths ages 1 to 19. 

LEARN MORE: For Black Kids, Gun Violence Is an Education Issue, Too

The study, conducted by Virginia Commonwealth University and Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU and published May 4 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, shows that, between 2014 and 2020 mortality rates jumped 36.7% in Black youth, compared to 4.7% in white youth. 

It’s a sharp reversal for the age group, which had seen death rates decline for decades. 

Dr. Elizabeth Wolf, lead author of the study said the trend is reversing the decades-long progress made in pediatric care. 

“Once you start looking at these trends with a magnifying glass, it becomes clear that mortality rates are not consistent across all racial and ethnic groups,” said Wolfe, an associate professor in the VCU School of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU. “While we saw that the overall pediatric all-cause mortality rate in the United States began to increase around 2020 and 2021, for Native American, Black and Hispanic populations, pediatric mortality rates began increasing as early as 2014.”

 Dr. Steven Woolf, the study’s co-author and no relation to Elizabeth Wolf, said the study adds more evidence underscoring racial health disparities in the U.S. 

“This latest study uncovers another layer of tragedy in that injury-related deaths are also reversing our progress in closing racial disparities in mortality,” said Woolf, director emeritus of the VCU Center on Society and Health and a professor in the VCU School of Medicine’s Department of Family Medicine.

Wolf and Woolf are part of a research team that examined death-certificate data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spanning more than 20 years. The goal is to assess how the risk of youth deaths differ by race and ethnicity.  The data show gaps in pediatric mortality rates between racial and ethnic groups steadily decreased until 2013. Since then, however, death-rate disparities have widened between groups, especially for Black and Native American populations. 

The disparities showed up in all causes of death including diseases such as asthma, influenza and heart failure. For example, Black youth die from asthma at almost eight times the rate of white youth.

Since 2020, however, gun violence has been the leading cause of death among all U.S. children and teens Still,it’s been the leading cause of death among Black children since 2006. The VCU study found that between 2013 and 2020, the risk of death from gun violence increased by 108% among Black youth and 124% among Native American youth. 

RELATED: The Other Pandemic: Gun Violence and the Death of Black Children

“Gun violence’s disproportionate toll on Black and Native youth is not inevitable, but the foreseeable result of this country’s devotion to willful blindness, systemic racism, and lax gun laws,” says Kelly Sampson, Brady’s director of Racial Justice and Senior Counsel. But it doesn’t have to be this way.” 

“We know that evidence-based solutions, such as community violence intervention programs or effective gun industry regulations, reduce gun violence,” Sampson says. “These interventions become even more powerful when coupled with other policies designed to redress systemic racism’s harm, such as job programs. At Brady, we hope that studies like this one will compel policymakers to use their power to protect Black and Native youth.”

The disparities showed up in all causes of death including diseases such as asthma, influenza and heart failure with Black youth dying from asthma at almost eight times the rate of white youth.

Between 2018 and 2020, drug-related deaths increased more than 200% in Black youth and 65% in white youth. Suicide rates among Black youth started rising in 2014 and by 2020 the rate was more than 81% higher than two decades before. The suicide rate among white youth increased roughly 48% over the same period.