There is a transcripted podcast interview with one of the authors, Emily Oster. She again makes the point that the problems seem to come before birth and postn

There is a transcripted podcast interview with one of the authors, Emily Oster. She again makes the point that the problems seem to come before birth and postneonatal (one month to one year after birth). http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/11/emily_oster_on.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/11/emily_oster_on.html > Russ: ... So, we started off by saying on the surface, the United States despite its relative wealth is something like Croatia--it's 51st in the world in infant mortality. Which is somewhat appalling. And we're double the countries in the world that are doing the best at keeping infants alive. Which is Finland. Given what you've looked at now, how would you summarize what we know about that picture? > Guest: I think that what I would say is that what we get out of our data is a recognition that the issues that the United States is having are not issues about the kind of medical technology part of this, and I think that's--in some ways surprising that [?] I think [?] we think of infant mortality as kind of being special and about things that are happening in hospitals and [?] and how we're doing with very small babies and it's true that that is an important part of infant mortality, but it's not a place that the United States is falling down. Instead the place that the United States seems to be doing worse is in the more mundane issues of what is happening before birth, most of which is going to be about things that are happening in people's households. And then what's happening after people are home with their infants. And both of these are not unrelated to broader issues in the United States, like we in general have a higher mortality rate among children, among adults, than most other places, and sort of thinking about this a little wholistically and thinking about how we can support women with infants when they are at home, if they do something that might be of some significant policy value. A scary quote: "So, for example, among, like, black women with less than a high school education in Cook County--which would basically be the South Side of Chicago--the infant mortality rate in this period is about 16 per 1000."