Disparate Disparities: Understanding Differences in Infant Mortality Across Racial and Ethnic Groups*

We analyze the disparities between several race and ethnic groups in a fundamental measure of population health: the rate at which infants die. Using micro-level Vital Statistics data from 2000 to 2004, we separate mortality disparities into three temporal components, and we assess the extent to which these components are predictable by observable background characteristics. The temporal patterns vary substantially across racial and ethnic groups: relative to whites, the high infant mortality rates of blacks and Puerto Ricans are primarily driven by disadvantages in fitness at birth, but the high infant mortality rate of Native Americans is driven by excess infant deaths during the post-neonatal period. Differences across races in conditional post-neonatal mortality are largely predictable by background characteristics, so much of the Native American-white mortality gap is predictable. In contrast, fitness at birth is only weakly related to background characteristics, so the black and Puerto Rican gaps are largely unpredictable. Additional analyses suggest that the well-documented advantage of Hispanics can be accounted for based on the background characteristics we study.