U.S. Infant Mortality Falls to All-Time Low, CDC Data Shows

What the Numbers Say

The CDC released preliminary data this week showing the U.S. infant mortality rate dropped to 5.36 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2025. That's down from 5.54 in 2024 and 5.63 in 2023, according to ZeroHedge's report citing the CDC figures. The agency bases these numbers on death and birth certificates.

In raw terms, approximately 19,350 infants died before their first birthday last year. The final count may tick up slightly as additional analysis is completed, the CDC noted, but it is still expected to land below the roughly 20,050 deaths recorded in 2024 and 20,160 in 2023.

The trend is real, not a rounding error. Researchers describe the year-over-year decline as statistically meaningful, translating to hundreds of fewer deaths annually.

What's Driving It

Nobody knows for certain. Dr. Michael Warren, chief medical and health officer for the March of Dimes, told the Epoch Times that pinpointing the cause is difficult. "This is an encouraging data point, and we hope that this trend will continue," Warren said. His measured statement captures both the good news and the genuine uncertainty.

The CDC identifies the leading causes of infant mortality as birth defects, preterm birth and low birth weight, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), unintentional injuries such as car accidents, and complications during pregnancy. A sustained decline across those categories would require improvements on multiple fronts simultaneously.

The State-by-State Gap Is Still Enormous

The new 2025 data is not yet broken down by state. But the 2024 state-level picture, released by the CDC this week in a separate report, shows a chasm that a single national headline cannot capture.

Mississippi had the highest infant mortality rate in 2024 at 9.65 deaths per 1,000 births. New Hampshire had the lowest, at just under 3 per 1,000. That's more than a three-to-one ratio between the worst and best states in the wealthiest country on earth.

Warren attributed those gaps to "a variety of reasons related to access to care, community factors, and policies that improve health and outcomes." That framing is deliberately broad, but the underlying data is concrete: where you are born in America still shapes your odds of surviving infancy in a measurable way.

How the U.S. Compares Globally

The worldwide average infant mortality rate is 28 per 1,000 live births, according to the World Bank, so the U.S. rate of 5.36 sits well below the global mean. That's the good news.

The less flattering comparison is with peer nations. A number of other developed countries post lower rates, including Australia, Belgium, and Hungary, according to ZeroHedge's reporting. The U.S. has historically ranked poorly among wealthy nations on this metric despite spending far more per capita on healthcare than most of them. The new record low doesn't change that structural position.

The Strongest Counterargument

Skeptics of celebrating this number have a fair point: a record low in a country that ranks below many of its economic peers is a low bar. Critics of the U.S. healthcare system argue that high costs, inconsistent Medicaid coverage across states, and gaps in prenatal care access mean the floor is still too high. They note that Mississippi's rate of 9.65 would be alarming even for a middle-income country, and that the national average masks conditions that are, in some zip codes, genuinely dire.

The national trend is moving in the right direction. Whether it is moving fast enough, and whether the benefits are distributed equitably across income levels and geographies, are separate questions the aggregate number cannot answer.

What the AP Coverage Missed

The AP News page returned unavailable at time of publication, so it is not possible to assess their specific framing or identify divergences. The core CDC figures cited here come from the Epoch Times via ZeroHedge and directly from CDC reporting as described in those sources.

The Open Question

The 2025 state-level breakdown has not yet been released by the CDC. When it arrives, it will show whether the improvement was broadly distributed or concentrated in states that were already performing well. If Mississippi and other high-mortality states drove part of the decline, that would be a genuinely different story than if the gains came primarily from states already near the bottom of the rate scale. That data is what researchers and policymakers should be watching.