• LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    led my mind on a train of thought and I was curious how infant mortality has improved over the years so I found this graphic:

    I’m most interested in the colorful squiggly lines that show a downward trend in infant mortality over the years, I’m not interested or care about the racial disparities, and I have no idea what that black jagged line going the opposite direction is.

    But I’m most interested in the colorful squiggly lines that show a downward trend in infant mortality over the years.

    • wolfpack86@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Well, the black squiggly line in the opposite direction shows an increasing relative gap between races, which you don’t care about.

      It shows that while infant mortality has gone down for all, and even though it’s significant, that black children are dying at an increasing proportion to their white peers. But you don’t care that it fundamentally shows that they’re getting the same access to the same improvements (either medical care, education of the mother on prenatal care, etc).

      • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I think you misunderstand what they meant with “I don’t care about”. It sounds like they just meant that it’s not line why they’re quoting this graph, they got it for the stats on child-deaths-per-1k people.

        • wolfpack86@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          But they also state they do not understand the black line, which I would argue understanding it is the entire point of the graph.

          Yeah, fewer infants are dying but access to the improvements is not equal. That’s a pretty important point to reflect on.

          (Obviously without any ability to determine the causation of the problem… Just that one exists and should be investigated)

          • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Yeah but not if you were just googling for a graph that shows the development of infant mortality in the past 100 years, this came up, and you need it for those curves.