Well we start off quite well. The death rate of fetuses before birth is pretty much the same for everyone at 7.2 deaths per 1000 total births. That goes for Pakeha, Maori, Pasifika and everyone else, whether rich or poor. Excellent.
It’s after that when things go pear-shaped. During the first year of life, the infant death rate was 5.2 deaths per 1000 live births in 2011, having dropped from 7.3 in 1996. More good news.
The bad news is that not everyone has had that benefit. The infant death rate for Maori is 7.7 and Pasifika is 6.4. The rest of the population loses only 3.7 babies for every 1000 babies that are born alive. I wonder why that is.
One factor is the old problem of inequality. If you are in the lowest 20% of the population, the most deprived people, your baby is five times more likely to die before he is one year old than if you are in the wealthiest 20% of the population. If the babies of the poorest fifth of the population were helped so that they equalled the average figures we would save 40 babies. If we could improve their lot to the equal the wealthiest group, twice that number would be saved from dying before they were one year old.
The reasons for the worse death rates include younger mothers and other antenatal factors, small babies and poor growth in utero, sudden infant death (SIDS) and where you live in New Zealand.
All these underline that we don’t give our babies an equal start in life really and it’s time we did something positive about it.
We know the problem. We know the answers which are complex and interlinked, but we seem too timid to take a brave approach to sharing our resources and wealth more evenly across our society so that everyone can potentially benefit.