- Global death rates drop for children 5 or younger, By Denise Grady, May 23, 2010, New York Times: “Death rates in children under 5 are dropping in many countries at a surprisingly fast pace, according to a new report based on data from 187 countries from 1970 to 2010. Worldwide, 7.7 million children are expected to die this year – still an enormous number, but a vast improvement over the 1990 figure of 11.9 million. On average, death rates have dropped by about 2 percent a year from 1990 to 2010, and in many regions, even some of the poorest in Africa, the declines have started to accelerate, according to the report, which is being published online Sunday by The Lancet, a medical journal. Some parts of Latin America, north Africa and the Middle East have had declines as steep as 6 percent a year…”
- Study: fewer kids dying than previously thought, By Maria Cheng (AP), May 23, 2010, Washington Post: “Child deaths worldwide seem to have fallen faster than officials thought, as a new study estimates far fewer children are dying every year than previously guessed by the United Nations. Using more data and an improved modeling technique, scientists predicted about 7.7 million children under 5 would die this year, down from nearly 12 million in 1990. The study was published online Monday in the British medical journal, Lancet. The new estimate is substantially lower than UNICEF’s last estimate of child deaths from 2008. Then, the agency said about 8.7 million children were dying every year of preventable causes such as diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty