Labora Rounds · From public data
Every figure on this page comes from the World Bank and the United Nations — not from us. We compare the United States with fourteen countries of similar wealth. The American line is the red one.
United States Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom
The United States loses more newborns than any of these countries. Japan loses about a quarter as many.
Same picture, wider window. The American line has come down since 1990 and is still the highest here.
Most of these deaths happen in the first year, which is why this line tracks the one above it.
This is the one that moves the wrong way. The American figure was 12 in 1990 and 17 in 2023, while almost every other line fell. Norway is at 1.
The only chart here where the American line is at the bottom rather than the top — and it means the same thing. American women live about two years less than German women. This chart does not start at zero, so the differences are readable.
The United States spends the largest share by a wide margin. Italy spends about half as much and buries far fewer mothers and babies.
Read the six charts together and one thing stands out. The United States spends the largest share of its economy on health care of any country here, and it still loses more newborns, more infants, more young children and more mothers than any of them.
Spending more is not producing a safer place to give birth. And the maternal death line is the only one on this page that is higher now than it was in 1990.
Source: World Bank Open Data, drawing on United Nations inter-agency estimates (indicators SH.DYN.NMRT, SP.DYN.IMRT.IN, SH.DYN.MORT, SH.STA.MMRT, SP.DYN.LE00.FE.IN, SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS). Retrieved 10 August 2026. Each line is one country, 1990 to the most recent year published; maternal deaths and health spending end earlier because that is where the published series ends. Nothing on this page is a Labora Rounds estimate.