1999: United States: AIDS Deaths Continue Fall, Infant Mortality Steady

1999: United States: AIDS Deaths Continue Fall, Infant Mortality Steady

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is no longer one of the 15 leading causes of death in the United States, according to an annual government report published on October 5, 1999.

The report, which summarized trends in U.S. births and deaths during 1998, was prepared by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. The report also showed that blacks continued to trail whites in several important measures.

AIDS deaths dropped 21 percent from 1997 to 1998, moving the disease off the list of the 15 leading killers for the first time since 1987. Health experts credited the decline to combination drug therapies developed over the past few years. Nevertheless, AIDS was the fifth leading cause of death among persons aged 25 to 44 and was the number one cause of death among black males in that age group.

Other causes of death also declined, including deaths caused by heart disease (down 3 percent), cancer (2 percent), stroke (3 percent), cirrhosis and chronic liver disease (4 percent), suicide (6 percent), drugs (14 percent), alcohol (6 percent), and firearms (11 percent). Some observers considered these figures more significant than the 21 percent drop in AIDS deaths. Because these causes of death are more common, these declines represent a larger reduction in actual deaths.

Deaths caused by homicides declined 14 percent, the steepest drop in 40 years. Despite the decline, homicide remained the number one cause of death for black males aged 15 to 24.

Average life expectancy climbed to a record high of 76.7 years in 1998. However, life expectancy among black males (67.8) remained considerably lower than that for white males (74.6).

One of the report's most widely cited findings was that infant mortality failed to decline for the first time in about 40 years. The 1998 rate, 7.2 per 1,000 births, was unchanged from 1997. The 1998 infant mortality rate among blacks (14.1 per 1,000 births) remained more than twice that of whites (6 per 1,000).

Experts disagree on the precise causes of this gap, but note that blacks give birth to more low-birth-weight babies (13 percent of all births) than whites (6.5 percent of all births). The NCHS report defined low-birth-weight babies as babies that weigh less than 2,500 grams (about 5.5 pounds). Blacks are also more likely than whites to be poor (26.1 percent compared to 8.2 percent among whites) and without health insurance (22 percent compared to 12 percent).

Births to teenagers declined 2 percent from 1997 to 1998, continuing a seven-year trend. Since 1991, births to women aged 15 to 17 have dropped 21 percent, and births to women aged 18 to 19 have dropped 13 percent. Births to unmarried mothers rose 3 percent in 1998, accounting for 32.8 percent of all births in 1998, up from 32.4 percent in 1997.