Billmon: America the Beautiful

Since 2000 a half century of sustained decline in infant death rates first slowed and then reversed. The infant mortality rate is now higher for the United States than for many other industrial countries. Malaysia — a country with an average income one-quarter that of the United States — has achieved the same infant mortality rate as the United States . . . the Indian state of Kerala has an urban infant death rate lower than that for African Americans in Washington, DC.

United Nations Development Programme
Human Development Report
September 2005