Empty Cradles: Confronting Our Infant Mortality Crisis

Abstract

The southern Chinese city of Guangzhou has mastered many of the trades Milwaukee championed in the last century: machinery, motors, metalworking. Guangzhou's boom has coincided with the sunset of manufacturing in Milwaukee, which in mere decades lost one of the nation's densest concentrations of mass production. The two cities crisscross in another way: Babies in China's industrial heartland now have a far better chance of reaching their first birthday. In Milwaukee, one baby under the age of 12 months dies for every 95 who live, making it one of America's most fatal cities for infants. A generation ago, Milwaukee was one of the safest