📊 Babies (Not) Dying

A look at progress in one of the world's most crucial metrics.

Welcome to Latinometrics. We bring you Latin American insights and trends through concise, thought-provoking data visualizations.

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Health 👶

With all of the partisan gridlock and political retribution in Latin America nowadays, it can be easy to feel like the region is irreversibly polarized—that every issue, every fight, is one for the culture war.

However, that’s not necessarily the case. Semi-normalcy has returned to Brazil for now. The candidates in this year’s Uruguayan election have so far remained mostly focused on policy disagreements rather than launching threats of prosecution against their opponents. Javier Milei even met with the Pope, who he once accused of being an “imbecile” who promotes communism, and the meeting apparently went quite well.

And if there’s some promising signs of political and social stability here and there, it’s worth recalling the many important issues upon which we can all agree. Like healthy babies, for example.

50 Years of Progress: Infant Mortality Reduction in LatAm

In the last half-century, infant mortality has plummeted across Latin America.

Infant mortality measures the percentage of newborn babies who pass away before reaching the age of five.

A number of factors play into this metric, such as healthcare access, hunger situation, and violence levels in a country. Young kids can pass away early on due to everything from malnutrition to war to infectious diseases which target them while their immune system is still weak.

As Latin America has developed, it’s seen 50 years of infant mortality rates descending, something also seen around the world in countries which have grown more prosperous and (sometimes) less unequal.