The leading cause of death for all children was unintentional injuries. Nonetheless, infant mortality rates remain higher than those in most other industrialized countries. The United States is twenty-fifth among 38 industrialized nations, says Heck. And problems remain with racial disparities in infant mortality. While infant mortality has declined nationally from 10.9 infant deaths for every 1,000 live births in 1983 to 7.2 in 1998, among blacks, the rate is 13.7, or more than twice as high as among whites and Hispanics.
Children are also more economically secure, the report finds.
The poverty rate for children related to heads of households dropped from a high of 22 percent in 1993 to 18 percent in 1998. And the percentage of children who go hungry decreased in 1999, down to one-third of children in poverty. But children's advocacy groups said that the current 18 percent poverty rate is the same as in 1980, indicating there was not a long-term improvement in child poverty. In education, the survey did not provide clear evidence of advances in children's well being. College completion rates remain at an all-time high of 32 percent, a level first achieved in 1997, up from 27 percent in 1994.